Review Summary: "I said I'd make an album! I never said I'd make it good!"
Austin Carlile.
Ok, now that the introduction is out of the way we can get to brass tacks for the review, and there's really no two ways about it, this album blows. Whether the listener is being bombarded by Carlile's wounded badger screaming, having their face pounded in by relentless drums, or being assaulted by some brutal breakdownz, there is little to nothing positive to say about this record. Honestly the only difference between this album and
Someday Came Suddenly is the omission of synthesizers and autotune. The core sound still stays comfortably in the meat-headed, breakdown-heavy, and devoid-of-talent territory.
"YDG" kicks the album off, and approximately ninety seconds in, the listener can safely turn this off and draw conclusions about the album. Those conclusions are pretty easily spelled out in ABC format;
A) Austin Carlile has a distinctive "scream", but has absolutely no range (or talent for that matter).
B) Jaxin Hall has a very pleasant voice and can sing very well. Unfortunately, he rarely does so because Carlile feels the need to be the center of focus.
C) The rest of the band is irrelevant. The drummer plays standard fare and rarely leaves the post-hardcore/metalcore comfort zone. The guitarists seem to be stuck in perpetual chug mode. As for the bassist, of course you can't hear him.
There is however a faint glimmer of hope in the form of second track "They Don't Call It The South For Nothing," which actually features a cool breakdown and amusing lyrics with some decent riffage from Mr.'s Hall and Manansala. Unfortunately, that's where the good ends, the rest of the album being such a blurry mish-mash of post-hardcore mediocrity that most will find it difficult to make it to the end of the album.
All in all, I was pretty excited for this album. Needless to say, it's a massive letdown. This is simply Carlile cashing in on his AA! fame by screaming nonsensical lyrics over a 33 minute breakdown, and boy oh boy, its worse than you can imagine.
It sucks, YDG?
