I was told that this band was "really good". I disagree. You may only be a rebel from the waist downward, but this band is generic from top to bottom. I've heard worse, but this isn't doing anything for me. I'm tired of "crazy go nuts" metalcore with unnecessary rhythmic chunkiness and discordance all over the place with lots of quick start/stop riffs and noisy guitar textures with no real flow and little feeling. And that's all this is. Fast grinding part, chugga chugga part, crazy go nuts part, awesome smooth jazz part, start/stop part, another crazy go nuts part, tremolo picking death/grind part, 10-second breakdown, etc. It's just slapped together with no real thought process or direction. Some of it's pretty cool, some of it's awful, but the lack of vision makes it bland. Every song sounds pretty much the same, too. I was pretty much bored after the first five songs of this disc. I like the drumming. It's not always extraordinary, but the guy's tight and I like his style. Good fills, lots of constant variation, etc. That's pretty much all this music is: An excuse for the drummer to just blast away and go nuts nonstop without worrying so much about structure or repetition. I definitely dig the drumming. Too bad the songs are so... ehhh, whatever. The last song is a cool instrumental, far more melodic and laidback, not to mention a shitload longer than everything else on here at 7+ minutes. After about a minute of blank space they close the disc with an unlisted 8+ minute track of noise, but not good noise... just random guitar feedback and string scraping junk with some distant screams on occasion. The recording is alright. It's clear. You can hear the bass, the drums are fairly natural with good density and brightness, the guitars are heavy and well honed, and the scathing screams are mixed in very nicely. I don't have any real complaints there. I'd tweak a few areas, but it's no big thing. The layout is all done in shades of light purple, and it looks pretty slick. There's a lot of large, blocky text, which can be hard to read, but it's consistent. The front cover shows some sort of image of a heart and blood vessels extending into the lungs, and the inner spread has a row of lung x-rays with some abstract textures and more text. The only thing I don't like is that the lyrics are crammed under the CD tray in a tiny font with a random image of a guy wearing glasses on top of them, breaking up certain lines. Not that it really matters, what with lines like this: "I've got this handgun, and I've shot a lot of rounds, But I'm going to shoot one more, I thought I loved you, We're going down in the books, I've got a score to settle, The blood runs red from your mouth, Why aren't you talking?" I'm not sure what else to say. The rhythm section of this band is pretty hot and the rest of the band sounds talented enough I suppose, I just hate the arrangements (or lack thereof) and the guitar parts/vocals are so damn "been there, done that".
[Pluto]
Running time - 35:00 (approximately), Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: It's Hard to Say No When You've Got a Gun to My Head, Have You Met My Friend Burns?]
Pluto Records - http://www.plutorecords.com
