Review Summary: Making prom night about as sensually exciting as taking a hot iron rod to your nether regions
You know that feeling when a concept is already a bit of a chore to digest, but the creator insists on wrapping that concept with a spiked, sulfuric acid coated mace, only to beat you over the head with it until you’re bloody and broken, wishing for the merciful embrace of death? That perfectly encapsulates the ”Undead” Post-Hardcore band, Snow White’s Poison Bite. It’s almost as though the band was being challenged to copy the most grating aspects from every detestable act in the genre, down to the very last repetitive synth loop and ear-fuckingly stale pseudo-pop punk riff. The Story of Kristy Killings is an atrocious debut album; and any potential this band possibly had is buried six feet deeper than the listener after being subjected to this desecrated corpse of an album.
The most despicable and horrendous part of this entire album are the vocals; jumping between faux shout choruses, and yelling segments, all while sounding like the hyper nasally off-shot baby of Gerard Way and Ronnie Radke rip-roaring drunk at a monster truck rally is no easy feat, and for this we must give “Jeremy Thirteenth” credit for somehow managing to sand paper scrub his larynx enough to produce that effect. His voice lacks any sort of consistent tone, and strains constantly in an effort to hit even the most basic of notes. An example being his awkward nasally chant in the beginning of ”Down in the Morgue.” Chants like that are common throughout the album, and at no time create anything even remotely resembling a salvageable melody. The harsh vocals can be, at times, acceptable… to a certain point, in the end they are largely just irritating, and range between cheesy sp00ky scene kid lows, and incredibly forced “I just listened to Suicide Silence for the first time” highs. The worst crime about the harsh vocal performance is that it’s arguably almost entirely unnecessary, but then again, the cleans are by far worse. The lyricism is just as atrocious, not only is it bland and repetitive, but it’s about as straight-forward as getting slammed with a crowbar in the sternum, and accurately resembles what would be considered an excerpt from a 16 year old girl’s diary, except more exaggerated, and melodramatic.
Quote:
”It's prom night, 6 P.M.
She's waiting for her date
To pick her up in a fancy car
The captain of the football team
Feels like the dream
It's time to dance, dance, dance
But she has lost her chance
Because this guy is so mean
She won't be homecoming queen tonight
Oh my god, she cried..!”
The instrumentals can only be described as uninspired, unorganized, and unfocused pandemonium. Not only are they unable to make any technically interesting or melodically captivating segments, but they aren’t even able to keep to one consistent theme, despite their aesthetic being such a huge deal. They constantly switch between poppy choruses consisting of nothing but chugging and overused synth sections to pseudo-deathcore littered with unimaginative breakdowns. The guitars rarely do anything interesting, and mainly keep to the same patterns while the drums are downtrodden and never venture beyond the same arrangements. Any attempts to be technical on the album are short-lived and add nothing to the effect of the songs in general. Another thing that this band attempts to do is create atmosphere with completely out of place musicality, such as in the intro "Symphonies for the Damned", and it's definitely not as sinister as it sounds. Their attempts at depth consist of nothing but over-used Halloween bargain store sounds with random female screams and down-tuned guitar chugs. It's no symphony, more along the lines of something whipped up in a couple hours in an attempt to create a lead-in for their bromidic Hot Topic haunt shop material.
In short, this is the absolute quintessential example of a band who is literally carved by the trends of the time, except unlike others of their ilk, this band doesn’t have the occasional melodic segment, catchy solo or strong vocals to justify their existence. The only memorable moments you will have listening to this album are the belly laughs that it induces if you aren’t inebriated to the point of internal liver rupture while listening to this album.
