Review Summary: Where Everything I Touch Falls to Pieces left off, or forgot to do this album made up for it.
Villainy –noun, plural -lain•ies.
1. The actions or conduct of a villain; outrageous wickedness.
Virtue–noun
1. Moral excellence; goodness; righteousness.
Dead to Fall –
Villainy and Virtue
Maturity is one of the best things that can happen to bands. The contrary is one of the worst, but when you find that band that just so happens to walk the path you find acceptable and gratifying it’s surprising and incredible. Personally I found this bands first effort,
Everything I Touch Falls to Pieces far acceptable and its creditability went far. Although the album was really decent, it sure had its share of hiccups per sae. Musically, the album didn’t go towards any extreme, good nor bad, which was sort of good and bad if you know what I mean. Each song seemed to slowly mesh into each other, and diversity was sort of hard to find by the end of the album, but it still kept its solidness. Lyrically, it did what it was supposed too, but it seemed a bit cheesy. After a few listens the lyrics just became a part of the fun of listening to the album. Nonetheless Everything I Touch Falls to Pieces was a good listen, but overall short of being anything amazing.
Villainy and Virtue on the other hand took what was on the lesser end and strengthened it up. To start for this review, I’ll examine the lyrical endeavor you encounter on each song. While the predecessor Everything I Touch Falls to Pieces failed at building true and meaningful lyrics, this album picked up and ran with it. Starting from first song on the album,
“Torn Self” you’ll experience metaphorical adventures, which seem as brutal as the emotional context they hold and stand strong with. The majority of the lyrical content on the album are personal conflicts with life itself, or with a certain someone that is blind to ideas of the lyrical creator, if you will. Thinking of what the lyrics hold, you’d think the words on the album would become generic and eventually all interest would be lost; quite the contrary actually. As you listen to each song, you’ll be surprised at the diversity that is demonstrated here.
Tied up, beaten, tortured, with no place else to go
We've all been through this, some with scars to show
Driving forward, falling toward impending doom
Intoxicated by the blood of the moon
I've driven the final nail into my coffin
My head is killing me, reminding me
Of what I have done to myself
This is the end of life as we know it
As said above, each song has its own lyrical diversity, but without musicianship this would be meaningless. So panning the view from the pen to the speakers, we delve into another beautiful atrocity. The problem that shook the greatness of
Everything I Touch Falls To Pieces’ music was the lack of diversity. Each song seemed to follow somewhat of the same pattern, and while there were songs that didn’t, the majority did. This is another part of maturity we see in this album vs. the other. Each song you listen to has its own personality and keeps you guessing on what you’ll hear next. While the bands official title fits nicely into the metalcore genre, breakdowns aren’t overplayed and used in every song. At 1:28 in the song,
"Bastard Set of Dreams" your ears are shaken with a bass scale played nicely over a chugging guitar, simply one of the highlights of the album. Another highlight to display the diversity, is the epic intro for the crushing song,
"You’ve Already Died". The bass plays brilliantly and continues while guitars come in and set the atmosphere. Listing all of the highlights would give away the brilliance for the album.
So with the hardware, and lyrics out of the way, we look to the other side, the vocals. As previously said, this album shows a brilliant side of maturity, vocals included. Not only did the production quality of the album hold the vocals to a higher pedestal, so did the vocalist himself. Compared to earlier effort
Everything I Touch Falls To Pieces, vocalist, Aaron Cosgrove has matured his deep and aggressive vocal style. There are times in the album where you’ll hear slight vocal strain, but for the most part it seems to keep up with the music. While his normal growl is consistent and strong, his deep and not played out voice is where the brutality is shown. Some songs fail to even dive into that vocal approach, but that’s for the better.
While the album has obvious achievements, it definitely isn’t flawless. While the diversity seems to keep you breathing fresh air, you’ll find that the technicality of the album isn’t too high. The guitars seem to shred, but never go out of the way to produce anything breathtaking. The way they choose to do things, sounds good, don’t get me wrong, it just seems if they upped their technicality the album would go much further in the crowd of metal heads.
Where
Everything I Touch Falls to Pieces left off, or forgot to do this album made up for it.
Dead to Fall has become one of the best and innovative metalcore bands out there. The sheer brutality, remarkable musicianship, and diverse lyrics along with songwriting is the reason this album should be listened too. Personally, I feel the band has received far below the credit that they deserve. Even If you focus on the flaws the album contains, the execution alone holds it high, and remains as an album to be listened too.
