Review Summary: In hindsight, it's just another Emmure album
Ah, the infamy of Emmure. A band that genuinely has some potential in its musical department, hindered massively by their frontman, Frankie Palmeri. With their eighth full length, the band resorts to the tried and (un)trusted formula of their previous releases: down tuned guitar riffs with decent, albeit generic, grooves with Palmeri’s hit and miss vocals and horrendously cheesy lyrics. Emmure’s polarizing discography, filled with some high points and plenty of lows, leaves
Hindsight in a rather negative limelight in the surrounding previous efforts, yet with some restrained hope following the promises of
Look At Yourself. With Palmeri heading the frontline, Emmure attempts yet again to revitalize their consistently hated career within the industry.
Throughout
Hindsight, Emmure manages to show hints of a band who knows how to craft genuinely interesting musical compositions. Joshua Travis’ ridiculously down tuned guitars chug their way fluidly throughout the album’s progression, spontaneously injecting just the right amount of groove and technicality across the duration. Combining the filthy open chugs of “Pigs Ear” and “I’ve Scene God” with the relatively intriguing technicality contained within “203” and “Pan’s Dream,” Travis streamlines
Hindsight with his effective simplicity behind the strings, providing a heavy, dissonant atmosphere. Supporting the barrage of the guitars, Josh Millet (drums) and Nicholas Pyatt (bass) lay the foundation of the grooves, providing a structured flow of heaviness and intensity. Although rarely taking the spotlight, each instrument manages to invoke their own flare of style within the album, showing a vast strength of band chemistry with the instrumentation. However, as the members rely heavily on their strengths, there isn’t much room for venturing out musically, leaving
Hindsight rather stagnant. Despite the (thankfully) short run time of just over 30 minutes, the instrumentation feels dragged out and boring by the end of the album, feeling like a recycled combination of Emmure’s established sound.
Ultimately, the true offender here is the one and only, Frankie Palmeri. As per usual with modern Emmure, Frankie’s horrendous lyricism bogs down the attempt of a fresh take on their musical aspirations. With lyrics like
”Bad boy bad boy for life, click click that’s some gang sh**” and the self aware
”Riffs and lyrics change / But you end up sounding just like me”, Palmeri’s lyrics are comparable to a middle school teen’s journal filled with angst and sarcasm. Lyrics aside, his vocal performance is very hit-and-miss with his screams, either hitting with a powerful punch or sounding completely ear-grating. Oftentimes, he resorts to a higher scream completely disguised with odd distorting effects, sounding like the vocals are drowned in muddy water, sounding almost as indistinguishable as his nonsensical lyrics. However, Palmeri manages to redeem himself at times with his lower growls, sounding clear and untouched by major effects, leaving the punch of his screams intact without adding to the headache of his storytelling ability. Despite much of the criticism directed towards Palmeri, there are also some rather poor decisions in the songwriting department that seem questionable at best. The odd electronic interludes between tracks halt all momentum and feel entirely disjointed from the overall “chaotic” sound of
Hindsight. Perhaps even more questionably, the strange placement and usage of vocal samples come off as intentionally gimmicky, making it all the more annoying as in “Pan’s Dream.”
With
Hindsight, Emmure only continues to add to their polarizing career, masking decently enjoyable instrumentation with lazy and trite lyricism and vocals. Despite the positives that the band’s eighth full length has to offer, the questionable efforts of Palmeri and various songwriting influencers hinder the record's ability to fully attain its true potential, leaving Emmure in the hole of hated bands in the industry. Maybe the band can one day produce a well crafted album, but in hindsight, their career has only highlighted their decline over time.
