Labels: Lucifer’s Legions
Review by: Michael Stewart
Were evidence ever needed that the use of the phrase “passionate hardcore” as a
marker for bands heavily influenced by Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today and the
rest of the Revelation Records catalogue is a crock, then here it is. There can be few
vocalists who come across more dispassionate than Turn Away’s frontman. Only
by the third track do his throaty incantations “” the words “growl’ or “yelp’ would be
over-selling this by far “” even approach sounding genuinely involved, and by the next
song it all seems to be evaporating again. For large swathes of To the Open Sea, the
man may as well be reading from a lyrics sheet. That a German singing in English
might have to deal with a language barrier is potential mitigation, but his delivery
indisputably hinders the record. And when his band mates decide to jump ship from
their competent but bland melodic hardcore for a riff straight out of street punk
101 on the penultimate track, the disc moves from threatening as much to actually
becoming adrift in a sea of mediocrity.