This is surprisingly good female-fronted "alternative metal" from Virginia. Of course terms like "alternative metal" tend to make me cringe and expect the worst, and there are damn sure some modern/nu-metal influences going on here, but I like this EP a whole lot. The music is heavy but constantly melodic, the vocals range from raspy shouts and hip-hop influenced arrangements to absolutely incredible singing and tons of soaring vocal harmonies (thankfully the focus is on the latter), and the songwriting is catchy without coming off as being poppy or manufactured or anything like that. Hell, most of the songs run six minutes or more and never get boring, granted there is one "radio edit", but... whatever. I love the arpeggiated riffing in "Labyrinth", that shit's right up my alley, and when mixed with heavy rhythms and nice uses of clean guitars (not in a ballady way) it makes for some killer passages. I'm not that big on the hip-hop vocal patterns, not because they don't pull it off, they do, I just feel that such a delivery cheapens a little bit of their style, because the singing is so fucking slick and powerful that they really don't need to mess with what has become a stale trend, even if they're being relatively unconventional about it. "Bound" is quieter and darker, with lush clean guitars and bass resting behind soaring vocals and calm percussion in the distance, getting a bit heavier for the monumentally catchy chorus. "Vessel" is similar in its blend of the calm and the aggressive, but the basslines have a jazzy flare that really sounds fucking awesome, and there seem to be some acoustic guitars mixed into the background as well. The "radio edit" of "Twelve" cuts the running time down to four minutes (shaving off almost three minutes) and dumps the segments of the original version that use the word "fuck", making it an obviously inferior song, so I probably would've left if off of the EP as it serves no real purpose, although I guess this is what they're using to try to get airplay, so... what can you do? The recording is damn professional for a self-released effort: The drums sound very nice (held in check by the density of everything else), the bass sound is perfect and plays a large role in the mix, the vocals sound excellent, and the guitars are really heavy with a decent level of clarity. Two things I would change would be to slightly alter the mix and add more brightness to the guitar tone. The vocals are a little too far out front, and the guitars need to be more dominant because they tend to get drowned out on occasion. Evening out the levels and reworking the guitar tone (barely) would make this thing sound like a million bucks. The layout's alright. It's all in black and white and I like the cover image that combines stone textures and human features, but it gets slightly bland beyond that. They repeat the same image throughout the entire layout, just to different levels of magnification, none of the lyrics are included even though they could've easily fit them in the center spread instead of wasting space with repetitive artwork and such, etc. It's not bad, it looks pretty professional for the most part, but it could easily have been taken farther. Regardless, this is a great CD if you ask me, and I could see this band getting huge. Fuck, I hope they do because I'd love to hear a full-length from 'em with a solid budget and all that. Good stuff. If you're not a fucking "mega super underground" loser and can admit that you like some of this stuff, then I would highly recommend checking this disc out.
[self-released]
Running time - 29:23, Tracks: 5
[Notable tracks: Twelve, Bound, and the others as well]
Red Pill Down - http://www.redpilldown.com
