Review Summary: A very solid start to what will hopefully be a prosperous music career for The Plot In You.
Alas, another metalcore band from Ohio. How many breakdowns can one state single-handedly produce? Well whatever the answer this band is actually a treat compared to most recent releases in this genre. Theres a lot less predictability on The Plot In You's debut full length, "First Born" than you would expect in most metalcore. This band isn't just a For The Fallen Dreams rip-off they are truly something special.
You don't really see a lot of bands putting out concept albums these days so right from the start I was interested to see how this would turn out. The album tells the story of a child abuse victim and the struggles he goes through in life. This is an album where you can truly feel the emotion they were going for on each song. "Miscarriage" speaks for itself and you can feel the depressing tone of the song as you listen to it, and "Rat Poison" is about as angry as this album gets. You'll be immersed in the unique and creepy sound of this album after just 25 seconds of the first song.
The songwriting is pretty basic and includes most of the elements you would expect but better executed than a lot of other bands. The song "Miscarriage" has one of the simplest riffs I've ever heard yet maintains a catchy groove throughout. As I said there are plenty of breakdowns but a lot of them are really different, such as in "The Fathers Seed" for example. The highlight breakdown has an interesting and unexpected pattern and deters it from being predictable. There are no ear blistering guitar solos here, just a lot of good catchy riffing combined with solid drumming to help make this music flow. Vocal-wise, this album features both singing and screaming. Most of the screams are deep, and low range but there are a few high screeches and even lower gutturals featured.
There are only a handful of things to complain about here. One is that the lyrics, although carrying the storyline the album portrays fantastically, don't always flow very smoothly. By this I mean there is almost no rhyming element in most cases. Of course, rhyming is not always necessary in metalcore but it would certainly help these guys a lot and take away some of the awkward sounding moments. An example that stands out is in the song "Filth". About 3/4 of the way through the vocalist says, "We've seen this all 1000 times, it's time for you to stay away", followed by a crushing breakdown. The energy builds up with the rising vocal inensity but it gets lost in the poor lyrical structure. The only other negative aspect on First Born is that they re-recorded a song from their EP and placed it randomly with the rest of the songs. Normally this is not too big of a deal but in a concept album the album structure is a lot more delicate and shouldn't be interrupted.
Overall, this is a very strong debut album from a young band and they breathe some originality in a stale music scene. For people who are tired of bands that all sound the same and use the same riffs and breakdowns over and over again, this is certainly an album that will give you some hope in the future of metalcore and sub-genres alike.
