Review Summary: Though nothing original, a still well-done album from the Boston metalcore outfit, Diecast.
By the time Internal Revolution finally came out, metalcore had long left the underground. Many new bands pick up on the bandwagon, playing some heavy thrashing guitars, energetic(?) anguish-filled lyrics, and thromping drum and cymbal combinations. For bands who weren't afraid of receiving criticism of "true metal" fans, they even added in clean vocals and melodic sung passages. Diecast is the latter, continuing on their newly acquired melodic metalcore mix on Internal Revolution. Of course, they're nothing we haven't seen before (not with all that Killswitch Engage going on, that's for sure), but despite that, it's still an overall decent metalcore album.
Overall, if you listen to this CD once, you gotta agree that this band isn't really that metal. Far more hardcore than metal. The only metal elements really are guitar squeals, and some thrash-drumming here and there (gotta love the fast drumming). I'm going to admit that one of the reasons that I even bothered checking out this band is because they reminded me of All That Remains, and at the time, I was searching for bands who had a similar sound, and what'd ya know, good ol' iTunes helped me out on that one. When I bought the album, initially I was fairly disappointed. Internal Revolution (the song) overall sounded like a pointless, unorganized mass of screamed vocals, intense drumming, some somewhat melodic guitar riffs, and some completely unnecessary clean vocals. Of course, that was just the first listen....
Probably the most impressive thing on the album is the coordination. All of the instruments are pretty well coordinated, so that the positions of where the instruments fall into place is just splendid. That way, it will build you up, bring you down, then build you up again sometimes. And, there are also plenty of tempo changes throughout the song, as well as changes in intensity (as evidenced by "S.O.S."). It's obvious that this band knows how to get all the members to play out loud, and still sound good, without one side overpowering the other. Overall, it's obvious that this band is trying to add in some technicality as well, even if it becomes filler (as seen in the last minute of "Weakness").
Like I said before, this album contains a good amount of hardcore. Paul Stoddard can hold his breath fairly long, and he can scream pretty furiously and fast, that's a given. Yet despite that, get this folks, the clean vocals aren't all whiny or emo-sounding! He can sing well, and he can scream well. However, his vocal pitch is an overall, pretty standard one, and his only attempt at making vocal diversity is to scream at a higher pitch (unless you count the studio-altered ending segment of "Out Of Reach"). The album contains quite a few solos, of course, some of them favor technicality over melody. The drumming is fairly varied, as I had stated before. It's obvious that this new drummer is good, but no replacement for Jason Costa. This album also shows a slight bit of maturing, with songs like "Hourglass", and "Nothing I Could Say", which depend primarily on clean vocals. Naturally, they tend to overdo their part a bit, as the chorus of "Hourglass" is really, them trying to exaggerate their newly-found melodies. The originality isn't too big on certain songs as well. "Fractured" is overall, an excellent song, until it reaches its chorus, and if you are familiar with Within Temptation's "Stand My Ground", you will definately have a very good idea of what the chorus sounds like (I'm surprised the Church hasn't complained about the cloning going on). However, there are still some decent tunes going on, with excellent standout songs like "Fade Away", "S.O.S.", and "Weakness", which all show a slightly more sensitive side of Stoddard. The album also contains some tracks placed there to be friendly with the hardcore/metal crowd, such as "Never Forget", and "Definition Of A Hero". Then finally, this album wraps up with a final farewell in the form of an alternative metal-styled part-piano ballad, "The Coldest Rain" (honestly, couldn't you just tell that it'd be an emotional track from the title?).
While Diecast adds nothing new to the metalcore field, they still show that they thrive to be leaders of their pack. Though they haven't reached that rank yet, it's obvious that they are progressing forward, while maturing and developing their sound. Overall, this band definately still has some potential, and don't be surprised if this band racks up critical acclaim in the future.
