Review Summary: Generic Metalcore Band + Generic Post-Hardcore Band = So the Story Goes
When it comes to run of the mill post-hardcore/metalcore bands, I generally try not to give them any serious critical review weight. I mean, it’s hard to do that when they sound like any other independent band you would find at Hot Topic does. Thus, finding myself reviewing So the Story Goes almost surprises me as much as you don’t care that I am, in fact, reviewing something by them. There is however, one great, fantastic reason for you to care, the reason I have taken the time to try and review their debut EP, As We March with Victims: the lead singer's girlfriend is smoking hot.
With that out of the way, So the Story Goes will massively appeal to fans of bands like Dance Gavin Dance, Scary Kids Scaring Kids and Alesana. They take some good influences (I can hear a good bit of Glassjaw in the vocals, but in the sense that Sonny Moore was trying to channel Daryl Palumbo), and at times sound like the better moments from From First to Last’s first record. Chugging riffs and breakdowns with some shred, hollow sounding production, tight jeans, and syllables being twisted for five seconds at a time.
It’s better when they try to keep a generic post-hardcore sound ala genericXcore band. Too often they fall into They’re Only Chasing Safety era sounding underOATH; horrible puking sounding screams and all. The intended dual guitar sound never comes through, and too often they settle for just playing the same parts. The melodic parts they like to include generally just serve as a nice break from the chug, but when the singer decides to wail, bending every note in a ghoulish way, the effect gets ruined.
I could namedrop a thousand bands these guys have probably been influenced by and have incorporated (heartlessly) into their music. As I Lay Dying, August Burns Red, Home is Where the Heart Is, Karl Marx And Friends, Fear Before the March of Flames, are only a few that immediately come to mind. I feel bad for criticizing them, because they are just kids trying to make a name for themselves, but the path to glory is not to pave it with that others have done before you, but to create it yourself. Unfortunately for so the Story Goes on As We March with Victims, they haven’t found a niche yet, and float in the abyss so many hundreds of bands do these days.
