Review Summary: Surprisingly average
When I first heard of Black Veil Brides I didn't think too much about them. I listened to their song "Knives and Pens" on a friend's Myspace page back around mid 2009. My first initial thoughts were another scene kid band that will die out in about another year or so. Well so far they lasted much longer than I expected and after listening to their debut album "We Stitch These Wounds" I have one thing to say, it's surprisingly not bad.
Now don't get me wrong I don't think this album is good, there are many things wrong with this album but overall it's not a bad start. But I like to start my reviews on a positive note so I'll list the things that aren't bad with this album first.
First off the band really knows how to play their instruments. One thing i was really surprised by was the fact that there are almost no breakdowns in the album, in fact they seem to replace all the breakdowns with solos... a very large amount of solos. In fact almost every song on the album has a solo somewhere in it. Some people may find this a bad thing but I don't, the solos show off a lot the band's musical talent. And I really enjoy their sound, it reminds me a lot of the older Avenged Sevenfold and Escape The Fate songs.
Now on to the negatives. First the songs all have a very similar formula, a lot of the songs sounds very much a like and it can get a little boring listening to the album all the way through. I pretty much knew where the solo in a song would be after about track 3. Normally this would be a much bigger negative but since this is their debut I'll let this one slide.
The lyrics are what you would typically find in generic post-hardcore bands. Talking about depression and such, but they're not bad enough to ruin the album.
But what really brings this band down is the lead vocalist Andy Sixx's terrible vocals. His voice is so monotone, boring and at some points down right unbearable that this album can be really hard to listen to all in one sitting. His screams aren't all that much better either, sounding very whiny rather than aggressive.
Overall though "We Stitch These Wounds" wasn't a bad start for Black Veil Brides but it certainly could have been much better.
