Review Summary: For fans of Fit for a King, Asking Alexandria, Crown the Empire, Memphis May Fire, and A Day to Remember.
Villain of the Story is an up-and-coming metalcore band from Minnesota that needs more recognition, and this album alludes to that. The vocal abilities of both Christian Grey and Logan Bartholomew need not be underestimated, and the instrumentation, while somewhat generic at points, still manage to sound enough apart from the rest for me to give it a solid recommendation.
What intrigued me especially is how diverse some of the songs can end up being while staying within the boundaries of the genre. From emotional heart-wrenchers like “Never Coming Back,” “This Apocalypse,” and “Powerless,” to political anthems like “GHC,“ this record has something for any self-professed metalcore fan. If you’re not a big fan of the more “emo” lyricism sprinkled in bits and pieces on the record, fear not - this album is not entirely dominated by emotional instability, so you CAN skip over half of the songs so you don’t have to hear about it. The guitar work isn’t amazing on a technical level, but it very clearly works for their style. It’s standard third-wave metalcore, but what can you really expect from a up-and-coming band? The next Octavarium?
One that I will mention is that the clean vocalist, Logan Bartholomew, sounds strikingly similar to Jeremy McKinnon of A Day to Remember at points, and since the current primary unclean vocalist Christian Grey is already fairly decent at clean vocals, I would love to see future offerings show Logan and Christian taking vocal duties on both unclean and clean vocals - something similar to the likes of Crown the Empire prior to David leaving the band.
I highly recommend this record for fans of Fit for a King, Asking Alexandria, Crown the Empire, Memphis May Fire, and A Day to Remember. It may not sway those who aren’t already fans of those five, as it does err on the side of “hero worship” at points, but even then, just give the band a chance. I won’t guarantee you’ll agree with me, but for a debut, while there’s room for improvement, they’ve given themselves a solid place in the scene, and I cannot fault them for that.
