Review Summary: Another snoozefest
Of Mice & Men has been a fairly visible name in contemporary metalcore for the last decade and a half. Austin Carlisle formed the band in 2009 from the ashes of its predecessor, Attack Attack!, a band so deliberately strange to an iconic degree that led into other splinter acts in the form of Beartooth and Bilmuri. As for Carlisle's new project, I didn't even discover this kind of music, let alone board the OM&M train, until 2014, when
Restoring Force powered its way to a #4 opening on the
Billboard 200 and racked up an admirable number of sales and lifetime streams. The band would release another album, 2016's messy and directionless
Cold World, before Carlisle departed from the group for a second and final time. Bassist Aaron Pauley, who replaced founding clean vocalist Shayley Bourget in 2013, became their sole frontman, handling both clean and unclean vocals. With this, the band not only returned to the heavier sound that defined their early work after
Cold World had oscillated towards nu-metal and Octane-core radio rock, but also marked the beginning of what has been a breakneck pace for Of Mice & Men. The bulk of their catalog has come following Carlisle's departure, but his shadow is one that seems to still loom largely over his former band; the numerous allegations of sexual misconduct levied against him in recent years only compound that reality, and imbue the band with a complicated legacy they didn't ask for. Whatever your opinion on the man might be, he
made Of Mice & Men, and in more ways than simply forming the act in the first place. Anything the band does will be weighed against what came before, and they've seemed acutely aware of that at times, too. That brings us to today, with the newest effort
Another Miracle being the fifth album the band has released in roughly eight years' time.
You'd think, given these circumstances, they'd be as eager to distance themselves from the sound that Carlisle originated as much as they have from the man himself. But Of Mice & Men in the Pauley era has been prolific in the worst way. As mentioned, it's been a
nonstop flow of new material. But it's not really
new in the grand scheme of things, as none of it is anything you haven't heard before. Some of it is interesting lyrically, and proficiently performed, but damn it, it's generic and even boring at times. I can barely get through a batch of songs before my attention begins to drift and wander elsewhere. As I attempt to fixate on the music and rack my brain as to why it elicits this response, a few things come to mind. I hear the somber and punishing opening to "A Waltz," which starts us off, and think it would make a great instrumental track. Then Pauley's screamed verses come in and, aside from the decently yelled chorus, fail to equal the largeness and intensity the track seems to be calling for. Maybe Counterparts' Brendan Murphy could have delivered this while employing the same technique and keeping the surrounding structure wholly intact.
A similar problem arises later on "Contact," where Pauley's clean singing are drowned out and unintelligible underneath everything going on. The drums are particularly loud. Maybe you can chalk it up to issues with mixing and production, but then his vocal runs on the chorus are awkward and clunky. The song's opening riff, however, is pretty rad, and boasts of another cut where Ashby and Manansala could have crafted something really cool if they went a strictly instrumental route. Sifting through
Another Miracle for highlights, earlier romp "Troubled Water" sticks out. From the catchy chorus to the blistering breakdown, with Pauley trying his absolute rear off, this one is, perhaps, the best track the band has churned out in recent memory. It's a shame that songs like these on the album are few and far between, because then "Flowers" brings us right back to the same head-scratching mistakes, as Pauley's vocals again lag behind, this time to skittering electronic flourishes.
Another Miracle's biggest and most pervasive pitfall is the production. There's almost always various elements competing against each other for dominance, and the final product almost never achieves any cohesion or consistency.
Like I alluded to earlier, Of Mice & Men are talented and capable performers. If nothing else, their back catalog is proof of it. But their shtick, their take on by-the-books mainstream metalcore, is one that has gotten seriously long in the tooth at this late juncture. You could take any configuration of songs across their post-Carlisle discography, jumble them together, and anyone who's not a dedicated listener would have an impossible task of assigning a song to the correct parent album. Sloppily produced and woefully unoriginal,
Another Miracle is pretty
poor. Maybe they'll surprise us and course-correct in six months when another new single inevitably comes out. If you want to make predictions, I think you're better off putting money on Bronny James over 1.5 points.
