Review: Tower of Rome “All is Lost, All is Lost, All is Yet to Be Found” CD

God damn... 11 tracks of obscenely frantic and grinding material in a mere nine minutes or so. I'm honestly not that into it at all because I'm just not that big on wild and crazy chaotic riffs with breakneck changes and no real sense of fluidity, but there are some cool parts here. It's usually when they slow it down and hit on some of the chunkier rhythms that I start to take note, as the blaring speeds and dissonant textures just do nothing for me. The vocals are also a rather irritating (though admittedly somewhat unique) high-pitched scream that just kind of cackles away amidst all of the stuttered riffing and blasting drums. There are some generic metalcore-isms at hand as well, of course (typical high-speed chords and chugga breaks with discordant notes galore), not to mention some unexpected bursts of straight experimental noise, but for the most part it's about as caustic as it can get. There's not a whole lot to grab onto, and with few songs hitting the one-minute mark it's over in a flash. "I Guess Moods Just Go With the Seasons Around Here" breaks down nicely and is probably the only song that I really enjoy on this disc, but I wouldn't say I truly dislike anything either, so... The recording is mildly problematic, but my real issue is the songwriting and nothing more. The drums are a little unbalanced and the timing falters sometimes, but the guitars are pretty effective - a little thin, but not too acerbic. And that lets the distorted bass tone have more room to breathe. There's a lack of low-end, though. So... while almost clear, the mix is on the flat side. Not so bad, but a better recording could make some of these songs a little more powerful... those that are walking the fine line between overly messy and jumbled and being fairly solid. The artwork is somewhat odd, using brightly colored and stark statues of Jesus layered over numerous other subtle photographs and textures, with lots of blank brown space and tiny, tiny text that can be quite hard to read. The lyrics are written in somewhat of a stream of consciousness flow and seem to be personal, and while not bowled over I certain cite no quarrels with the content either (It's just damn hard on the eyes trying to read through the stuff!). I kind of feel bad giving this a 5/10 since it looks good and I don't hate it or anything, but that doesn't change the fact that to my ears it's an uneventful CD that really doesn't do anything for me. Sorry.