Review Summary: Generic to say the least.
The Amity Affliction are an Australian based metalcore band, who's been popular over there for many of years. Let the Ocean Take Me is the 4th studio album from these blokes. At one point, these guys were my favorite band, and this was ranked up as one of my favorite albums, but oh how the times change.
Let's start with the production on the album. The vocals here are way too polished, drowning out the music in the background, but lucky for us (I guess), we aren't missing out on much from the instrumentals. The drums are terribly triggered and sound completely unnatural, 99 percent of the guitar riffs in this album are either open note chugs or really simple power chords, and the bass isn't even audible. That really gets to me. Why even bother having someone on bass when it doesn't even appear in the music?
The lyrics sound like they were written by a 12 year old trying to cheer up their sad friend. Most of this band's lyrical content has basically either been dumbed down depression talk for years. Here we get such "inspirational" (using that term very loosely) lyrics such as "You gave me the strength to say, hey death, get ***ed!" and "This goddamn life is our disease, and we can't always ***ing win." As you can see, Joel Birch's lyrical content has dipped down so much. Their lyrics were never great to begin with, but their earlier stuff they wrote is Shakespeare compared to this forced out trite.
Another gripe I have with this album is the abundance of breakdowns. I usually don't mind breakdowns when they're structured well, but these breakdowns are terribly structured. They're all open note chugs following the beat of the drums. And at times they come out of nowhere and even feel out of place, like how in Lost And Fading, there's a breakdown right in the middle of the first verse. And after the second chorus, like right after it, they're another horribly put together breakdown. They seem to reply on them too much rather than just making a few decent riffs.
All in all, this is a poorly put together, by the book, terribly produced, metalcore album. Played way too safe to cater towards the scene kids/Warped Tour attendees.
