Uzumaki
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Soundoffs 24
Album Ratings 5762
Objectivity 74%

Last Active 08-19-22 8:00 pm
Joined 11-13-18

Review Comments 4,839

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Anti-core?!? The Worst of the Worst

As many of you know, I recently completed an 18 month odyssey through the bowels of the hardcore, metalcore, post-hardcore and deathcore, with small asides in (semi) related genres; 7 lists, 600+ albums/EP's of (mostly) good shit, and some of middling quality. Now, I want recommendations for what you've found to be the worst representations of these aforementioned genres, if only to further solidify my appreciation for what I did enjoy; so plant both feet, square your shoulders and give me your best fucking shot(s). ... Like the 8th homework list, as long as you rec stuff, I will check it out, just on my own time; I'm not gonna focus and push myself like I did with the last 7, so don't worry/feel bad if you don't see progress on this right away.
1brokeNCYDE
I'm Not a Fan, but the Kids Like It!
2Design the Skyline
Nevaeh
3Chunk! No, Captain Chunk!
Something for Nothing
4Attila
Fallacy

Lot of “reeeeees” in here. Somewhat bland beneath all the bluster and anger being projected at the listener, “Fallacy” is just that, a fallacy, faulty reasoning built around the supposition that Attila could be better than their contemporaries. Listening to this twice, there was still nothing to latch onto through both runs, no nugget in the vocal performance or instrumentation to help it stand out and therefore make you take notice, no aspect of tone or flow that made this catchy or memorable in any way, nothing. Bland. Blah (blegh?), this is the most hearty “whatever” I can give this.


2.3/5
5Waking the Cadaver
Perverse Recollections of a Necromangler
6Icarus the Owl
Icarus the Owl
7The Fall of Troy
In the Unlikely Event
8Emmure
Felony
9The Devil Wears Prada
Dear Love: A Beautiful Discord
10Abandon All Ships
Geeving

“We don’t give a fuck, we just came to party.”
Yaaaaaaawwwwwwnnnnnn…
Nothing really interesting here to set it apart from the tidal wave of similar bands during their time, just another post-hardcore band with liberal electronic influences. Yippee. That they were signed to Rise Records should tell you everything you need to know about how this album is; only interesting thing that caught my ear was the song “Family Goretrait”, which featured the vocalist from Protest the Hero on it - that was kinda fun. Everything else? Pass.


2.4/5
11Dead by April
Incomparable
12Okilly Dokilly
Howdilly Doodilly
13These Hearts
Forever Ended Yesterday
14Hello Kitty Suicide Club
^_^
15Blood on the Dance Floor
Anthem of the Outcast
16Etienne Sin
The Art of Stealing Hearts

Wow, this was shit. Asinine lyricism, bad vocals and almost childish (re: simplistic) musicianship all made for this to be cringingly stupid, unappreciated and unwelcome to my ears. Hats off to those who listened to this and grew positively from this. You're the real heroes who emerged from this debacle.
The less said about this, the better. Jeez.

0.8/5
17I Prevail
Trauma
18ChugChugWob
Redemption

An absolute chugfest if there ever was one, Chug Chug Wob surprisingly bring the chug here. Chuggy bits, chuggy breakdowns - you name it, they’ve got it. Despite the sameness in flow and instrumentality, this wasn’t a terrible outing, just forgettable, really. “TTFN” lowkey a guilty pleasure kinda bop given the lyrical content, the makers of the “Blood and Honey” film franchise should license that song for their next installment. Again, meh, but not completely worthless.


2.5/5
19Miss May I
Rise of the Lion
20Death of a Salesman
The Art Of Misdirection
21Asking Alexandria
The Irony of Your Perfection
22For Today
Fight the Silence

You know, I’ve gotta give credit where credits is due in the fact that much like Ludicia, For Today promoted and supported a singular message in their music that was unlike 90-95% of their peers and contemporaries at the time and stuck by it without withering in the face of dissenting opinions, but the buck stops there because upon relistening to this album there was nothing here that grabbed my attention at all; sounding like “wash/rinse/repeat” on almost every single track, this was B O R I N G. Vocals and instrumentals blended together into a monotonous mash, no exciting tonal adjustments and the flow was the musical equivalent of a lazy river, just straight up boring. At least “Break the Cycle” and “Pariah” are still lowkey bops, otherwise I would’ve fallen asleep….


2.3/5
23Unleashing My Demons
Tran​(ce​)​scen(e​)dance
24Thallahu Akbar
DJihad EP

This… wow. Just… wow. This just oozes “14 year old internet troll” energy, the constant clips of the phrase “Allahu Akbar” almost immediately going from joke to insufferable. This takes running with a concept and beats it into the ground and then some. Absolutely nothing commendable here, and while yes I laughed at the ludicrousness of this EP, this was absolutely terrible. T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E. The less said, the better.



0.5/5
25Suicide Silence
Suicide Silence
26Sleeping With Sirens
Feel
27Aiden
Knives

Poor man’s MCR, and it fucking shows. Dull, derivative and guilty of the greatest sin in music: it’s boring. The vocals lack charisma or passion, the instrumentals are serviceable but never really rise above any given moment, tone is tolerable and the flow is monotonous, leading to an unengaging whole. Boring as fuck and totally unnecessary to those wishing to peruse the -core galaxies. Skip this.


2.1/5
28Falling in Reverse
Fashionably Late
29Escape the Fate
Escape the Fate
30The Bunny The Bear
The Stomach for It

Another bland entry into the “electronicore” canon, and could this be the dollar store version of A Skylit Drive? The high-pitched cleans remind me of them the most… overall there wasn’t anything here that could or would attract even a casual listener especially when there’s more palatable options out there; the shouted uncleans were kinda grating, synths were overdone and the instrumentality was average at best. I guess this would be more of a situational band/album if I were two decades younger, but I’m happy I didn’t grow up with this in immediate aural vicinity. Meh.


2.3/5
31The Paramedic
Smoke & Mirrors
32Abandon All Ships
Infamous

I mentally groaned when I heard the hip hop feature on the second track, a casualty of a band trying to maintain relevance in an over saturated scene. While I will defend the usage of rose-colored glasses for some releases in my past, there’s other albums like this one where I scratch my head and wonder how I enjoyed something like this in the first place. More of the “same ‘ol, same ‘ol” here, not necessarily building off the foundation of their first album but adding on an extension; creatively stagnating across 30 minutes, this was boring with a capital B.


2.3/5
33It Lives, It Breathes
We Come In Numbers
34Vampires Everywhere
Hellbound And Heartless
35Miss May I
Monument
36For Today
Breaker
37Stick To Your Guns
The Hope Division
38The Plot In You
Happiness In Self Destruction
39We Came As Romans
To Plant a Seed
40Issues
Headspace
41Issues
Beautiful Oblivion
42The Devil Wears Prada
Dead Throne
43For the Fallen Dreams
Changes
44I Am War
Outlive You All
45Chiodos
All's Well That Ends Well
46I Killed The Prom Queen
When Goodbye Means Forever
47The Agonist
Five
48I Set My Friends On Fire
You Can't Spell Slaughter Without Laughter
49The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
Don't You Fake It
50As the World Fades
As the World Fades

Thank the metalcore gods this is the only album from As The World Fades. For every Chiodos, The Devil Wears Prada, I Killed the Prom Queen, or even for every Attack Attack!, there’s bands like As the World Fades; earnest and possibly well-intentioned kids/young adults making music to the best of their abilities, but their abilities aren’t good enough. There’s a track here that encapsulates this band’s sound perfectly in a negative sense. The track, entitled “Here Comes New Challengers”, sounds like c-grade metalcore mixed with either default electronic samples that come pre-downloaded on an electric keyboard or bad re-interpretations of video game boss music. And that’s this album, every single song. I can imagine that one could think this is good stuff if one were 15 years old and never heard metalcore or electronicore in their life, but this did NOT age well at all.



1.6/5
51King 810
Memoirs of a Murderer
52Dot Dot Curve
Til the Wheels Fall Off
53Volumes
Different Animals
54King Conquer
1776
55wecamewithbrokenteeth
We're Packing Are You?
56Black Tongue
Born Hanged

Deathcore that commits the cardinal sin of being uninteresting. There was and is so many bands within the genre that are sonically varied and vibrant, and Black Tongue bring none of those aspects to the table here. If anything, Black Tongue is performing in the style made popular by Lorna Shore almost a decade later, but there’s no technical flair, no vocal difference to set it apart and make it worth listening to more than once.


2.3/5
57We Break Hearts! Not Hymens
Suicide Is the Most Sincere Form Of Self Deprecati
58Capture the Crown
‘Til Death

Reaches “Absolute Meh” on the ‘ol reliable meh scale, this is some of that sleek, soulless -core drivel that would’ve found life on a second-tier Sumerian-style record label back in the day. All electronica filling in the gaps when there’s no breakdowns or gang vocals and decent instrumentality (re: tolerable) overall, this definitely would’ve fit the mold of something brand new, fresh to -core me would listen to if I wanted to hear something “heavier”. I’m glad I’ve progressed past that point in my life. Whew.



2.4/5
59Strawberry Hospital
Grave Chimera
60Upon a Burning Body
Straight From The Barrio
61I Declare War
Amidst The Bloodshed
62A Stained Glass Romance
It's Not A Party Without Us
63Acrania (UK)
Totalitarian Dystopia

I wanted to fall asleep whilst listening to this, but then that meant I’d have to listen to it again to write the blurb, so I stayed awake. Have you ever hear of “vanilla” deathcore? Nothing here that I haven’t heard before, done more originally or engagingly; very paint-by-numbers, bland, cookie-cutter deathcore at play here. Nothing to single out, nothing to mention, just a hearty heaping serving of nothing but “meh”. I felt like the “c’mon; do something” meme just listening to this, everything just blended together, and I even was paying attention. Geez.


2.5/5
64Betraying the Martyrs
Breathe In Life
65Casino Madrid
Robots

“The world is my dance floor…”
Not nice. Back during the early to mid 2010’s, an offshoot of metalcore called “electronicore” got really popular, with many a band hopping on this trend to ride its popularity; in basic form, electronicore, if done well, can at least be fun and kinda catchy, and if done poorly, you can tell it’s shit immediately. Casino Madrid fall unfortunately into the latter category with this entry, and I only use the term “unfortunately” because minus the electronic elements, the instrumentals are actually not bad; however, due to bland usage of electronic elements, rote vocals performances and fucking cringe lyricism, the band, and by proxy, us, find ourselves in this predicament. Tone is tolerable, but the flow does nothing to distinguish any of the intangibles at all; “Fantasy vs. Reality” is f-u-c-k-i-n-g h-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s in the most terrible way possible. This was a hearty “yeesh” on the toleration scale, and I won’t miss this entry at all.


1.9/5
66Bury Your Dead
Cover Your Tracks

I can hear the hardcore influence in the vocals and instrumentation for this band, having that throaty shout instead of varying uncleans and there’s a swing and groove that help differentiate this from the straight meat-headed chugging of some metalcore, but don’t get confused - this is still metalcore, through and through, and surprise… it isn’t terrible. I wouldn’t go out of my way to jam this repeatedly, but I wouldn’t mind if songs show up on a playlist or something. Vocals and instrumentation is solid if simple, tone is decent (except for those drums!) and flow is solid. It works. It flows. It lowkey bops and bangs in parts. Not bad.


3/5
67Throwdown
Venom & Tears
68Dear Whoever
Sound the Trumpet
69Deez Nuts
Bout It
70Feed Her to the Sharks
Savage Seas
71Four Letter Lie
What A Terrible Thing To Say
72Ludicia
Anchored

No....
Just please, no....
Ludicia was (thankful emphasis on “was”) one of many metalcore bands dotting the scene back in the early 2010’s. What made them stick out for some were their unabashed stand, lyrically and spiritually, for Christianity, and more power to them for standing by their convictions, but for other people, Ludicia stood out for how baaaaaaaad they sounded, and that is definitely evident in this album. Guitar tone mimicked the clean vocalist, in that it sounded whiny and sometimes grating. The vocals, in addition to sounding whiny, also sounded nasal and forced, almost as if he was trying to mimic a hard rock style of singing and was failing miserably; the uncleans were tolerable for the most part but unmemorable, and the flow was.... meh. Decent at best. A tolerable concept of a band, horribly executed. No second chances for these guys.

1.2/5
73In Fear and Faith
Imperial
74I Killed The Prom Queen
Beloved
75Woe, Is Me
Genesi[s]

I wondered how I would fare when revisiting particular albums that happened along early in my journey through metalcore, with this being one of them. I now have an answer: I’ll be perfectly fine. Woe, Is Me’s sophomore effort is inoffensive to the point of being labeled “vanilla”; what I mean by that is there’s nothing, nothing in tone, nothing in style, nothing in production, that can set this album and/or band apart from the hundreds of other bands peddling the same brand of metalcore at the same time Woe, Is Me was around. Very chug-chuggy in the guitar tone and musicianship, slicker than a politician running for re-election in production, overall tone and flow is so one-note this aspect could almost be deemed as a run-on sentence in musical terms and overall terribly forgettable. No tears shed over this.

2.4/5
76LoveHateHero
Just Breathe
77SECRETS
The Ascent
78Texas in July
Bloodwork
79Twitching Tongues
Disharmony
80I Shot The Duck Hunt Dog
For Derek
81Atreyu
Visions

This… wasn’t terrible. Inoffensively bland, but that’s all, really. Being the band’s first EP ever, it serves its purpose decently as a proof of concept; it’s not a certified world beater, but if one expects something along these lines then you may need to pump your brakes a little and readjust expectations. Uncleans are alright, but I will agree that the cleans are really the weakest link here. Everything else is serviceable, and this was ok. Sue me (not really!).


2.4/5
82Snow White's Poison Bite
The Story Of Kristy Killings
83Destroy The Runner
Saints
84Inked in Blood
Lay Waste the Poets
85Inhale Exhale
The Lost, the Sick, the Sacred
86The Autumn Offering
Requiem

This is the equivalent of you wanting an early Avenged Sevenfold release and your mom telling you you’ve got A7X (this) at home. Absolutely uninteresting, drolly dull melodic metalcore where the technical flair of the occasional guitar solos in here are far outweighed by how distinctively “meh” the vocals are. As hard as it may be for some of you to swallow, you’d be better off listening to anything A7X did up to “City of Evil” than this. Bleh.


1.9/5
87Twinspan
Anthems of Your Scene Phase
88Demise Of Eros
Neither Storm nor Quake nor Fire
89Beware The Neverending
The Next Level

Uhhh… ehhh… hmmmm… this is gonna be one of those fun ones, won’t it? Riding that single string “chuggachugga” method of metalcore with slight garnishes of melodic guitar thrown in to save this album from the sea of mediocrity. For as much as the band purport to have “southern metalcore” influences in their sound, I really didn’t hear any of that, and if there was any of that sound in the album then it was heavily buried under the downtuned tone and “breakdown-a-minute” game plan. Vocals were so-so and the instrumentation was pedestrian; only saving grace was the song referencing “Toy Story”, otherwise this was a hearty “meh”.


2.5/5
90Vanna
Curses
91Drop Dead, Gorgeous
In Vogue
92Endwell
Homeland Insecurity
93Whisteria Cottage
Heathen
94Twelve Gauge Valentine
Shock Value
95xAFBx
My Life, Your End
96Every Bridge Burned
Aun Aprendo
97The Showdown
Back Breaker
98BryanStars
Follow Your Dreams

Oh boy. I remember waaaaaaaay back in the day when I was first getting into the genre and thus subject to the influencing winds of articles in Alternative Press of “the 100 bands you need to know about this summer” and of channels like Bryan Stars’. I never gave a shit about the skits or interviews because there was a sub-channel of nothing but MV’s of unknown/upcoming bands and that’s where I’d go to find new stuff. Fast forward to today and we find that not only was Bryan Stars was/is quite the tool but he also tried to create a career in the arena he (tangentially) originally made his bread and butter: music. To that end, this is inoffensively milquetoast to the nth degree. Bryan’s vocals sound like anyone and everyone else, the instrumentation sounds like whatever starter music packs one can buy off the internet, tone and flow is hella homogenous…
99BryanStars
Follow Your Dreams

this is so insipid it’s almost sleep-inducing; at times this honestly felt like a desperation move to retain relevance as opposed to an outgrowth of love for a genre of music, and as such the kindest thing to do would be to forget about this effort and let it slip back into the depths of irrelevance. Close this chapter. I dunno why this ended up into a 2 entry scrawl, but here we are. The follow-up EP is worse, folks.

1.3/5
100Attack Attack!
Someday Came Suddenly

NGL this bops, I dunno what y’all are smoking with this here. Crabcore, electronicore, whatever subgenre you wanna ascribe this album to, this album has that classic “scene” sound prime late 00’s/early 2010’s that’s easily identifiable to those who grew up in the scene around the same time, but to its credit, the album doesn’t overplay itself into any one of these sounds to the point of being corny, surprisingly balancing itself throughout its runtime into something enjoyable. Vocals, instrumentation, tone and most importantly, flow - everything works. I liked this.


3.6/5
101Attack Attack!
Attack Attack!

As a follow-up to their eponymous debut, this… wasn’t as good. Featuring Caleb Shomo in a more pronounced role and something of a repudiation against everything that worked on the album before, this sounded closer to what Rise Records was churning out at the time than being its own sound, which meant this was dull. Ticking off all the stylistic boxes needed to garner a paycheck, there really wasn’t anything here except in fleet passing to merit interest. Nothing in vocals, barely anything in instrumentation and flow and nothing again in tone. Ultimately a disappointment and therefore rightly forgettable. Pity.


2.3/5
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