Here's some relatively diverse metalcore mixing caustic distortion and screaming with clean/acoustic guitars and singing. They literally sway from the melodic emo/screamo type of thing to more of a heavy rhythmic and dissonant style with some odd tempo changes and time signatures and such. "Feathers Cast to the Ground" is a nice little piano instrumental whose placement provides a good break as well. "Until Abigail" is made up mainly of acoustic guitars and singing and is much more laidback. Piano comes into the background for a short time, too. This is a great song, definitely showing off smoother songwriting with more fluidity than some of their other work. I think they're a lot better at the calm stuff than anything else. Their more chaotic and heavy riffing doesn't do anything for me, and the screaming vocals are annoying. The singing on the other hand is really pretty good. These guys went so far as to drop some extra cash to have the master for this thing created in the most pristine manner possible by the pressing plant, but honestly, that slight increase in sound quality isn't going to make a difference when your record already has a less than stellar recording. No offense. I mean, the production isn't awful or anything, but it does need work. The acoustic guitars sound really good, and the drums are natural, but beyond that things start to get tricky. For one thing, the kick drums are too muddy and bass heavy. Secondly, the mix is really inconsistent, so sometimes the vocals are almost impossible to hear, while at other times they're almost overpowering. The distorted guitars also need work, because they're too choppy to really transition smoothly out of the clean breaks (the fact that you can practically hear them hit the distortion pedal as the tones break up when they change over hurts even more), and the way they mix with the bottom heavy percussion tones is sort of disruptive. I'm also not even sure there's any bass on the record. I can make out several layers of guitars, but there's a big gap in there and I'm not really hearing any basslines that I'm aware of. One of the guitarists is credited with having played bass as well, but I really can't hear it. It just sounds too flat. Visually this thing looks pretty cool, though. All of the photos are of buildings and seem to be taken in the early morning hours, so the color scheme is sort of similar throughout, as are the fonts, which are tightly compacted inside the center spread to cram in all of the lyrics. The band photo inside is great as well, as it's a panoramic shot that's very wide and very short, stretching all the way across three panels. Nice. The lyrics are pretty strange, often vague and personal but interesting enough to hold my attention: "White beach sandcastles. A prison for your broken fingers nectar and those stars. Fading stars rotting stars rotten stars. Unborn I throw a wrench in you with my lipstick smudged denial. You are just a pawn. In a moment it's too late to choose nightfall guardrails. Should I have remorse when we share a scar?" Not bad, but I feel like there's no real direction on this CD. They're going in too many directions at once without a whole lot of cohesiveness, so their strengths are spread out and nothing seems to be working together. If they hone their writing and score a better recording they could have something great on their hands, but right now this is only mildly original and a bit more promising than the majority. They just need to really start thinking about what they're doing and making a concerted effort to make their releases more linear. They really are good at the chilled out stuff...
[self-released]
Running time - 48:33, Tracks: 10
[Notable tracks: Until Abigail, Let Slip Salvation]
Autumn Wind Thesis - http://www.autumnwindthesis.com
