Review Summary: Oceans Red, the perfect words to describe the amount of blood coming out of my ears after listening to this album.
When they first debuted in 2013 with their EP entitled “Hold Your Breath”, the band surprisingly managed to gain some fans and while receiving some criticism their way as well. The band is well known as one of the many to mix generic metalcore with dubstep, a perfect blend of sub-genres to cause nothing but pain and torture for those who look for more in music than just simple chugging patterns and constant wubbing. But later on in their careers, the old vocalist Serj Kravchenko could no longer do vocals for the band and was replaced by Joel Holmqvist and it seemed like there was still hope for this band to change for the better but did it happen. Actually, it did but it still ended up being a poor release anyways.
The first track entitled “Anevidence” starts off the album with a synth electronic vibe for 48 seconds and eventually hits into the second track “Falling” which consists of chaotic screams, constant chugging guitars, clean vocals, and huge amounts of synth which basically turns the song into a huge atrocious mess. While the drums have a strong sound to them and basically end up being one of the only redeeming factors of this song, they don’t do enough to save it from being a complete and utter nightmare to get through. The rest of the album is essentially the same and while there is some sort of experimentation in some of their songs (ie. “Misguided"), they fail to deliver any sort of enjoyable qualities.
Oceans Red could easily be put in the same spot of complete and utter trash as other core bands such as I See Stars, Crown The Empire, and Asking Alexandria. But what makes them worse is that the production on their album is poorly executed causing it to become an even more wrecking experience for the ears. Other core bands can make their albums sound slick and well put together, but Oceans Red failed to follow that same routine causing them to sound even worse than the current scene/emo trendy bands that exist today.
Generally speaking, there are barely any redeeming factors about Anevidence. While the drumming does have a bit to offer to the experience, it only stands out due to the fact that everything else was just mediocre and terrible. And while Joel Holmqvist does have a decent enough singing voice, it’s nothing memorable. If he were to start a hard rock band and abandon Oceans Red, then he would have a chance at being well known and successful. With that being said, his screaming is tremendously awful. It sounds like a homeless man with a penis in his throat screaming in pain after getting his own penis chopped off and shoved up his anus and that’s being too kind about the screams. To be completely honest, what I just described could actually be a more pleasurable experience than this album gave me. I think I’ll look more into that.
Recommended songs: none
