Review Summary: In the current flood of metalcore bands that all follow the same "chug, chug, chug, bree bree, sing, bree" pattern, and all sound exactly the same while doing it, it's nice to find a band that can manage to use this same pattern and manage to pull it off
In the current flood of metalcore bands that all follow the same "chug, chug, chug, bree bree, sing, bree" pattern, and all sound exactly the same while doing it, it's nice to find a band that can manage to use this same pattern and manage to pull it off well.
Capture and Embrace may not be the greatest attempt at this genre, but it is a good one. The first track
Today Is Yesterday's Tomorrow starts off with Ian Fike growling out the first few parts of the song, after which he starts speaking the words "Because there are things upon this earth we as human beings are not meant to endure, like being subject to an overall judgmental society. It makes me sick to know that my life will be represented by the world we are in now." Now I don't know about you, but when I was still listening to, for lack of a better phrase, "entry level metalcore", the lyrics were never as strong as that because the groups all have the same sort of mentality where they're going to be GRR BRVTAL during everything but the chorus where they will sing beautifully so dey can get sum bitchez B))))))).
The next song, which happens to be one of my favorites,
Brothers To The Flames starts off with some pretty calm guitar, followed by the introduction of the drums, and then Fike comes in and continues to be one of the few vocalists that can face seamlessly froma new falsetto singing voice to a deep growl(or at least, as deep as he is allowing his voice to get).
Refusing To Live Under The Tyranny of Others was a song that managed to be one of the better songs on the album, until you hear Fike sing out "I refuse, to live under your tyranny" which in my opinion, just ruined the entire song. The rest of the album doesn't really have any tracks that stand out and made me think "woah, that was awesome" as much as the first 2 did, and manages to start sounding stale around 4 tracks in.
Overall, this album manages to separate itself from the endless sea of BRVTAL I 0WN U metalcore bands that add clean vocals just to be more mainstream and get a wider fanbase of anorexic scene chicks that love listening to them because they're "like death metal for people that care about how they look!" I'm admittedly not a huge fan of bands that use this scream, sing, scream technique, but it's pulled off so well there that it bears recommending. That's not to say this album has no drawbacks other than being metalcore. Fike's screaming/growling/whathaveyou could use some work in places (although he manages to save your attention in places with his singing, I considered putting the album down more than once). The album is also rather short, with 11 songs ranging from around 3-4 minutes, the album is just over half an hour.
