Album Rating: 4.0
what are you talking about
Messengers is the very definition of mediocre
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Album Rating: 2.5
constellations was pretty good as far as generic metalcore goes, was hoping they had something else worthwhile to listen to
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As far as generic metalcore goes, I think ABR have consistently been making awesome tracks with generic filler
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Album Rating: 2.5
i don't how you can give one of this band's albums a 1.5 and then give another a 4.5 they are all sonically pretty damn similar
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Album Rating: 4.0
After taking a peep at a couple songs from that album I'm on the side of TooManyFriends and LivingThrowaway in regards to being confused about the rating jump for you Ignim.
Sure, they've improved on this album, but not a 1.5 - 4.5 extent.
I didn't say 1.5. I've had Messengers at between a 2.5 and a 3.0 over the years: it's not a bad album by any means, but it just does not hold my interest. Yeah, it's very similar to this one in a lot of ways, but it also gets a lot of things wrong that this one (and all of their other albums minus maybe Thrill Seeker) gets right.
1. I hate, hate, hate the production job of Messengers. It's absurdly grating to me, and not in a good way.
2. They go hard and never stop going hard on that album. I mean, sure, Back Burner is a fun listen on its own, but when you play 11 variations on Back Burner for 50-something minutes, all with the same level of intensity, it gets really tiring.
3. Uninteresting breakdowns out the wazoo. Sure, FiFAP and R&R have plenty of breakdowns, but they're almost always more interesting than 90% of the breakdowns on Messengers. Also, I don't like it when an artist spends more time on breakdowns than they do on anything else (Back Burner has, like, 352 breakdowns and the other songs aren't far behind).
Constellations was a lot like Messengers but with actual songwriting taking precedence over chugga chugga breakdowns and with improved production.
Leveler built on that album by adding experimental bits - admittedly, they weren't always successfully integrated, but it's the thought that counts, I guess.
Rescue & Restore combined the quality songwriting of Constellations with further improved production. It also worked in the experimentation of Leveler, but those bits felt like parts of a cohesive song rather than random, out-of-place salsa breakdowns.
This album does everything right that R&R did right, but expands on the instrumental breaks and experimental bits, and I think that it absolutely succeeds in doing so. Songs like Martyrs or Broken Promises are just as intense as anything on Messengers and just as well-written and technically accomplished as anything on Constellations or R&R, and seamlessly integrate fairly lengthy, post-rock-y instrumental breaks in ways that actually better the song as a whole.
Anyway, that's my opinion on how they've progressed. I understand why some people love Messengers and why some people just straight-up don't like any of their output, but I personally love the direction they've taken with this album.
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Album Rating: 4.0
Also, I might add that Vanguard is, in my opinion, the zenith of everything that ABR have the capability of being. It marries the post-metal-ish stuff that they've played with on songs like Meridian or Creative Captivity to their trademark metalcore sound in a perfectly-realized, seamlessly-integrated way, with neither overpowering the other and each massively enhancing the other. It's a fucking perfect balance, and if they make an album that's entirely in the vein of Vanguard I will lose my fucking shit.
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Album Rating: 4.0
Ghosts/Blackwood/Majoring in the Minors and Everlasting Ending are some of their best songs to date. I wasn't too impressed with the lead singles but this blew me away in the end.
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Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off
Totally agree with you @ignimbrite
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Album Rating: 5.0
calling this band bland is like saying Nickelback is varied and talented
hate to compare the two but seriously...
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Album Rating: 2.5 | Sound Off
Vanguard is a Misery Signals cover, practically.
(but it's a nice song)
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Album Rating: 3.5
To be fair if you don't like a genre almost everything will sound generic that comes out of it to you.So if you don't like metalcore than yeah this going to sound generic, but if you do like it this is top notch stuff
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Album Rating: 2.0
Yeah except a whole quarter of my pie chart is metalcore and im constantly going through the genre as a whole and planning on doing a few massive lists with long paragraohs for the best of the genre and this band is really nothing special
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But Mort. don't you get it? The hype is real.
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I'll get around to this eventually but they won't ever top thrill seeker's raw intensity
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yeah idk what the big deal is here, this is pretty standard/generic metalcore with some decent instrumentation
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Album Rating: 4.0
i would say that august burns red do the more generic sounding metalcore very well.
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Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off
Pre-order finally arrived, damn this sounds good in CD quality! I don't know if its normal but every track was around 1530 kpbs, that's pretty high quality for a CD I think.
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Album Rating: 4.0
Sounds like pretty standard ABR on first listen. Ill come back to my rating in a week.
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Yeah except a whole quarter of my pie chart is metalcore and im constantly going through the genre as a whole and planning on doing a few massive lists with long paragraohs for the best of the genre and this band is really nothing special
Looking forward to those Mort. I want more good metalcore and we seem to have similar taste, stuff like this album just doesn't do it for me. I guess I'm alone in thinking that Thrill Seeker was the only interesting these guys did.
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Album Rating: 4.0
but actually, why is The Wake the opener and lead single while Marathon got dumped onto the deluxe edition?
it makes zero sense
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