Review Summary: If you like generic, over made, breakdown ridden metalcore... then you will hate my review.
No Tears for the Creatures is the follow-up album to
In the Library of Horrific Events. For me ILHE is a 4.4/5, a gem among bland, repetitive metalcore bands with overdone melodies and too many breakdowns. I was excited for this album, truly! It was produced by Dan Weller and Justin Hill of SikTh and there were lingering hopes that it would equal or surpass ILHE. It didn’t.
So many things were neglected when making the album, notably: production quality. Everything sounds so blended and filtered. There was little to none of the different screaming like in the previous effort, just constant strained growls. The guitars play similar leads/rhythms that don’t complement each other. The bass is inaudible throughout the entire album and it’s as if they gave up of mixing the drums.
To describe how this band has fallen off the path completely from what they accomplished before is the beginning of
Last Arms of the Apocalypse. The beginning of the song is a breakdown. I have a personal dislike of breakdowns, which chug along with a guy screaming nonsense in the foreground. The problem with breakdowns is that they have one emotion/atmosphere: brutal. You cannot make a breakdown that is happy or sad, you only hear the band getting out of their way to make something br00tal.
Strangely, this band is excellent when being pretentious and over the top because they don’t turn out boring, homogenous metalcore with static keys and time signatures. There are some hints of what I mean in
Fog Lights and
The Weeping, Wailing, and Gnashing of Teeth where they set dark atmospheric tones with pockets of background screaming and constantly strummed chords. Near the ends of both songs you hear in the background:
Quote:
with a moderate tempo over it which brings the two tracks into one monster 14 minute long song.
Eight of the ten tracks on this album sound almost completely the same with no ingenuity or style put into it. It’s almost as if they used this as a cash grab, only producing two worthwhile songs. I have never held Johnny Truant as a band with amazing guitar leads, or astonishing drumming, I have never mentioned the bass, but when they use their chord progressions and slow tempos to produce an atmosphere they shine through as great musicians, even with overly brutal moments (like
The Bloodening) they end up having a raw, separated tone which defies their genre.
To be completely honest, just get
Fog Lights and
The Weeping, Wailing, and Gnashing of Teeth. Or, skip them completely and get
In the Library of Horrific Events.
Pros:
For all you metalcore lovers
Br00tal at some points
Fog Lights
The Weeping, Wailing, and Gnashing of Teeth
Cons:
Homogenous
Seems like a cash grab
Lacks atmosphere
Not overly done
Worse production quality than IFHE
Bad growling
Limited “black metal” throat scream
Breakdown at the beginning of a song
Eight songs that sound like one big song
Inaudible bass
Rating: 2.3/5
