Review Summary: Bury Your Dead...is fucking dead.
Bury Your Dead has never been quite the consistent band, first debuting with “You Had Me at Hello” with a straight up fun hardcore punk affair. The band remerged with the Tom Cruise theme based “Cover Your Tracks” with an almost completely different lineup which featured favored vocalist Mat Bruso, the style of the album danced on the lines that could be classified as both metalcore and metallic hardcore. “Beauty and the Breakdown” was a surprising turn of events as it displayed the band’s eagerness to experiment with electronics, but this was the end of the glory days it seemed. Mat Bruso left, and the replacement Michael Crafter (of I Killed the Prom Queen) left as quick as he would join, pressure from the record company pushed the band to find a vocalist and fast, but soon after the dissolve of metalcore band Cassius Myke Terry soon took over. The result was “Bury Your Dead” a darker/more metal affair much to everyone’s disgust and Myke’s wider range replaced the guttural snarl that most where expecting. However the band did manage to pull of more melody, and inject smarter/more intelligent lyrics (but who could forget such gems as YOU FUCKING BITCH! ALL YOU DID WAS SNITCH!) . With a newfound fan base, Victory again turned on the pressure for another album, after they had just finished a record, the end result is nothing you’d expect…..in a bad way.
The band goes further down the road of “needs moar melody”, and put it simple it sounds like they were trying to come across as a Evergreen Terrace/Death by Stereo type band, but ended up sounding like Slipknot. Comparisons to Slipknot are impossible to ignore (take a listen to “Psychosocial” & “Hurting Not Helping”, side by side and you’ll understand), in fact the band even takes the cue and puts the same formula into every song on the album of “verse-chorus-verse-solo/breakdown-chorus”. Myke displays sharper honed cleans this time around, but his scream is much shallower then it was displayed on the self-titled. The group tries to inject more show time for their guitar players however most of the guitar solos, and breakdown feel forced and uninspired. The lyrics as much as I know it’s generic to say, but they feel very “emo”, these lyrics could be easily found on a Mayday Parade, or A Vain Attempt record.
A few gems are however to be found “Helping Not Hurting” manages to show the cleans vocals without feeling forced and all the while retaining maturity. “Swan Song” shows some of the band’s best guitar work to date, and the chorus to “The Lion’s Den” is dare I say it…pretty damn catchy and genius. However songs like “Without You” feel uninspired and Myke even sounds bored and strumming through a magazine while in the recording studio (and the clearing of the throat before the song starts only makes me wonder if this is true). “The Great Demonizer” tries to stretch the range of Myke even further, but the guitar riff manage to save it from being too bad. “Closed Eyes” sounds like a really bad ballad…plain and simple. The album closer “Enough” sounds like the ending theme to the TV show ”The Incredible Hulk”.
This isn’t the Bury Your Dead you were expecting, and as I tried my hardest to defend them during the self-titled days, I think it’s time I finally pack my bags. There isn’t much to defend, and a lot to hate. This album is only to be listened if you’re horribly depressed or if your just a die-hard Bury Your Dead fan. As a former fan boy I used to chant BURY YOUR FUCKING DEAD!, but now Bury Your Dead is fucking dead.
Reccomended Songs-
Hurting Not Helping
Swan Song
The Lion's Den
