Review: Fares Well Without “Soundtrack to a Cardiac Arrest” CD

This is a decent, but overly raw, demo of rather typical melodic Swedish death metalcore, but they write strong enough riffs to get by. As usual the tremolo picking runs are the key weakness that need to be obliterated (thankfully there aren't too many), but the midpaced dual guitar harmonies and chunkier chord progressions are pretty good. Also nice is the vocal variation, from a growled sort of scream to an Endpoint-esque form of yelled singing, with plenty of gang backup shouts on occasion. What holds this demo back the most is the presentation, both visually and as far as the audio. The CD-R comes with xeroxed packaging that has artwork and titles and that's it. No lyrics or anything. It looks a little too crude to really work well. More importantly, the recording is super quiet and also very muddy. The drums are pretty clear, but the guitars are overly thick and messy, drowning out the bass, so most of the riffs lack a lot of detail and end up smashed together. The playing is also not as tight as it needs to be, so working out the kinks there would be highly recommended. I'd give the guitars much more of a well rounded sound, and try to let the bas handle the low-end. The vocals aren't so bad either, but the drums and vocals sound flat and distant compared to the up front muddiness of the guitars. "A Night of Dreaming of You" opens with clean guitars and very soft singing, and is one of the most forcefully melodic and memorable tracks, with a nice midpaced churn happening. Sadly there are some painful tuning issues with the guitars, but with a proper recording this would be a damn nice song. The other standout is the longer and slower "Overdosing on All the Wrong Things", which has some nice dual guitar interaction and a good variety of contrast between chunky hardcore influences and straightforward dual guitar metal playing. The midpaced tempos often do give this material an extra push, I have to say. As a whole the songwriting does need a little more work to remain consistently energetic since this is such a generic style of music at this point, but I think a better recording and tighter performances would make a big difference in how these guys come across. I have to give it a 5/10 though, as the flaws do hinder its delivery. Plus, they're selling this thing for $7 plus shipping, which I find to be very unreasonable.