Melodic hardcore with a good level of old school influences is what you'll get here. Most of the vocals are straight yells with some nice singing and strong backups at times, and I think I'd prefer to hear more of the singing used during the lead vocals. It's pretty catchy stuff, especially the chorus to "Thank You". They're really short, energetic songs, none topping three minutes. I'd definitely cite some punk influences going on as well, what with the "whoa ohhh" backup singing in "The Romance is Dead" or "Prey for Sunlight" and some of the more prominent bass runs. "Spiderbite" is faster and more straightforward with some quick little arpeggios and a few Lifetime-ish rhythms that I fucking love, but most of the tracks mix up the influences very nicely. My main problem here is that recording is entirely too raw. They could get away with some dirtiness around the edges, but the vocals are mixed too far out front, the rhythm section gets pushed to the rear, the snare totally sounds like a drum machine with a really weird and unnatural sort of snap to it... it's just strange. The bassist is really good but all too often his playing is too hard to pick out, and the grittiness of the guitar/vocal textures clouds things up and loses some impact in the shuffle. The layout's not bad. The band photo takes up too much space in my opinion, but I like the illustration on the cover and the way the lyrics and everything are arranged. As for the content of the tracks, it's personal material and the lyrics sort of walk the line between being typical and slightly above average for what they have to offer, but a lot of the lines and stuff seem too familiar and overused as a whole. I definitely like the songwriting here, but in all honesty I can barely warrant giving it a 6/10 because I think the recording needs a hell of a lot of work. A cleaner, slightly more polished, tighter sound that would better represent the musical angle these guys are taking could make an enormous difference in the final outcome. Slightly tighter performances wouldn't hurt either, but the recording is the first thing I would worry about tackling.
[Inferno]
Running time - 26:58, Tracks: 14
[Notable tracks: Thank You, The Darkest Lesson, Spiderbite]
Affront - http://www.affrontrules.com
