Review by: Tom Hughes
This band’s bio on their website says, as a lot of these things tend to, that they formed partly out of frustration at most of the (implied: bad) music they were hearing at the time, so decided to make it themselves, etc etc. This seems odd though, as they actually ended up pretty much copying a record they obviously did like (the last Converge album) and then getting one of the people who made that record to produce theirs (the big C’s Kurt Ballou). And then they played with Converge the other day too. Cycle complete. Boringly. More ‘long live our friends’ than ‘death to our enemies’ in effect. And, inevitably, it’s not a patch on ‘Jane Doe’ neither: this is pretty standard metalcore with a half-decent melodic sensibility and a guitarist who knows a few good searing emo chords. And they get slow and creepy and a bit electronic one on song too. Woo. Live they weren’t a whole lot better: really going for those patented Dillinger Escape Plan axe-slashing moves, mics wrapped round wrists and all, but more worryingly playing really quiet, and sounding pretty indistinct and powerless to boot. That ‘99% of all music is bad’ thing is starting to seem especially true for metalcore when so few of these bands are really worth it. Ah, alas and alack.