Review Summary: To be as basic as possible, this is amazing music. Think Hot Cross meets Darkest Hour, it's beautiful. Melodic, surreal, emotionally moving.
Albeit the style has been growing more and more generic as of late, we have something that somehow manages to be fresh without doing much innovation.
Amanda Woodward is a screamo band from Caen, France consisting of two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, and a vocalist. The standard formula, I'd guess, however, what works, works.
Anyhow, onto the music, starting with the title track, you get a sort of energetic feel of strange melodic guitar, somewhat similar to Fall Of Troy or maybe Hot Cross, but it's much more subdued and you have a nice backing rhythm, reminds me of Darkest Hour, very melodic, very enjoyable. The progression of the music is unflawed, and the vocals, well... the standard hoarsely shouted "talk scream" but this time
in French!
It's truly a sound where the entire band seems emotionally connected, something that I've personally been searching for lately. In many cases, you'll have very emotional vocals and generic, sterile music, or the other way around, but in some cases, this being one of them, you have music that's driving and loaded with feel, and the coarse vocals that so express emotion.
The second track, Binaire Et Lisible, once more draws in the Hot Cross comparisson, even more so, but a Darkest Hour-like twist on the end of riffs... it's like Cryonics meets Undoing Ruin. Much slower than the first track, but also quite powerful. There's a really nice part that starts at 1:39. As a whole, the structure is basic, but it builds majestically. Busy drumming, but not
tooo busy, fittingly busy, like the drummer is having a breakdown along with the vocalist.
I think what adds to the whole feel that this is real and meaningful is the fact that even though the lyrics are in French, the vocals just portray the feel. It's very surreal, from a musical standpoint, but very pretty as well.
The album continues on as such, the song structure stays basic, yet stand-out. It's true genericism, yes, but it's better than the standard, because though it sounds like a lot of other things, it stays good, and throws out its own twist. Very melancholy, and definately relaxing.
