Review Summary: All My Friends are Dead
Beatdown. Love it or hate it, it's the latest sub-genre of heavy music to hastily climb into sight among heavy scenes everywhere. Deathcore kids growing up, flooding other scenes, demanding their "slow and low" style of aggression be taken seriously. Remember Black Tongue? Traitors? The biggest bands in the respective style of yesteryear, only to have their seat usurped by the release of Knocked Loose' 'Pop Culture' in 2014. Fun riffs, heavy breakdowns and goofy lyrics all contained into what (appropriately) clocks in at less than 15 minutes, and with 'Laugh Tracks' doubling that time, the flaws begin to show.
The problem here is that it’s just too much to sit through, and with the same-y feeling you get a little over halfway into the record (“A Fetish,” “Last Words,” and “Oblivion's Peak” all introduce the same way), you can’t help but feel like call out lines like 'You son of a b-tch!' are lazy and uninspired, with gems such as
"This is the end of all things fair,
The year of heartache,
The season of despair"
And the rest of the lyrics are exceptionally vague, almost seeming like an afterthought with such a focus on writing the heaviest thing they could. Bands such as Kublai Khan, Left Behind, and Desolated have a similar approach to being heavy as can be, but lyrically they have some sort of weight and coherency to them, putting them above just having kids scream words that only serve to introduce the next breakdown. Additionally, some riffs feel bland and lack any weight to their introduction despite having the great production of Will Putney, and I swear the exact tempo change and riff of the intro to 'Deadringer' was used in 'My World' from Code Orange’s latest offering. 'Blood Will Have Blood' offers a more upbeat approach, with some more traditional hardcore style riffing, being a welcome break from the sea of open notes that seems to pale in comparison to 'The Gospel' off of Pop Culture, and the album is over before something of a similar ilk is expanded upon. A moment like this seems like a happy accident as opposed to a well executed moment musically.
On top of being the hype band of the week, I can’t help but feel like Knocked Loose has just further cemented themselves as being second rate Deathcore. Very little here gives me the impression that they're more than formulaic and breakdown ridden. Fortunately, they have their tinges of potential here and there. The songwriting is locked tight, the hardcore riffing in 'Blood Will Become Blood' is a welcome change, and the orchestrated bit in 'Last Words' sways in the direction of Black Metal. Creativity could benefit the band, or we could get Born Hanged 2.0, and we all know how well that worked out last time.
Stream:
http://www.altpress.com/features/entry/knocked_loose_arent_pigeonholed_by_genres_on_debut _laugh_trackshear_entire
