Review Summary: The fall of The Fall of Troy.
Let me come clean right now: I hate this album.
I just cannot appreciate this album as post-hardcore or as good in any other musical style. I understand the desire for The Fall of Troy to change their style, afterall it’s something they have consistently done for every single release - polishing their sound, moving away from the harshness of their past, bit by bit.
But this album? It’s like listening to generic alt-rock only with really bad screams. The quality of everything decreased. The guitar play is far less complex to the point where it just sounds like basic rock; a far cry from the insanely technical riffs of Doppelgänger. All Ward is doing on bass is playing really mellow, slow backing. Unlike on their previous releases where he would echo the main riff or play something just as complex to intertwine with Erak’s guitarplay here he just plays a very boring beat to match. It’s the same deal with the drumming. Gone are the days where Forsman led a tight, fast paced beat. It’s all simplified, all calmed down.
Meanwhile Thomas’s singing got even flatter and more boring than previous releases. The only time I enjoyed the singing on this album was near the beginning of “The Dark Trail” where Erak goes for some really high cleans and it comes out all warped and amazing sounding. Erak cannot sing. We’ve known this since they were playing in The Tribune. Why he thought it would be a good idea to emphasize the clean singing is beyond me.
It’s not just the clean singing though. Even the screams sound noticeably worse. They’re just so dull. They sound completely flat. There is no more alternative of Erak’s screaming and Ward’s screaming. Nor is there even alternating of Erak singing clean and Ward screaming. It’s literally just Erak singing clean on every song and Ward showing up for some background scream cameo. The screams should never be relegated to background duty unless it’s for atmosphere.
On a related sentiment, I feel like the actual recording quality is pretty piss-poor as well, but I don’t know anything about the recording process. All I can say is that everything sounds very muted. You know how people hear sounds and they can imagine a picture from it? When I listen to this album I see the color brown and nothing else. It looks like mud in my head. I blame the mix for that. It just sounds like mush.
There is literally only one song on here that I think gets out of the ream of “terrible” and into “not bad” and that’s “Sledgehammer.” And you know why it’s “Sledgehammer?” Because they actually scream in it and the complex return. But even on this track the complex guitarplay is incredibly minimal and only shows up for small flashes. Erak continues to sing awfully as well, but the screams are actually pretty good except for the fact that at some points it sounds like Ward is screaming from about 20 ft away from the recording microphone.
It’s not a good alt-rock album. It’s not a good post-hardcore album. It’s just not a good album.
Top 3 Tracks:
Sledgehammer
A Man. A Plan. A Canal. Panama.
The Dark Trail
