Review Summary: Misery Signals, third albums sees the band fine tuning their sound and maintaining their identity.
It’d be accurate to claim Misery Signals as one of my favourite Metalcore bands. My absolute favourite? No, but they’re definitely up there. Part of it comes from their ability to make fluid songs that transition from one sound to another without obvious pausing. But beyond that it’s because I feel they bring the hardcore back to the Metalcore genre. It also helps that much like Underoath they take a heavy influence from Hopesfall and have a rather impressive ability to include ambient, post-rockish sections into a relatively heavy soundscape.
Controller, being their third album can be looked at as the make or break album for the band. Usually that honour befalls a band’s second albums but due to extenuating circumstances (see: change of vocalists) I feel it’s unfair to expect the band to go all out when creating what was essentially a second debut album. Moving on, Controller is the third album to be put forth by Misery Signals and what an album it is. Despite opening with the two tracks that are easily the weakest cuts on the album, the band more than makes up for it during the rest of the disc.
On that note, Labyrinthian is the first track to really introduce the listener to everything Misery Signals bring to the table. Early into the track you’re hit with a rhythmic guitar line which smoothly transitions into an odd-timed melody, but rather than have it dominate the sound it remains slightly back and off to the side. It’s this balance between instruments that lends strength to Misery Signals’ song writing. Instead of packing an album full of trebly leads that sit atop the rest of the band, they focus on incorporating intricate ideas into their sound in the least intrusive manner possible.
Beyond that, the percussive force of Branden Morgan is something to behold, travelling through a myriad of time signatures throughout the album, demonstrating a keen level of strategy in the placement of his beats and fills. Of course vocally the album is up to par with the band’s standard output. Karl Schubach once again demonstrates a level of intensity that greatly adds to the depth of the band’s sound. Appearing for the first time within the band’s history are Karl’s clean vocals. Whilst keeping their usage relatively limited he demonstrates an apt usage of clean singing several times on the album. As it was on the previous album he’ll also throw a few spoken word segments into the songs to break up his constant barrage of growls.
With all this said there are still certain areas in need of improvement. Despite the band producing some incredibly strong songs and segments they still have a few too many breakdowns within their music. No, it’s not a festival of half-timed chugging but, a few of their more mosh-heavy songs could probably do with a reduction or two. An unfortunate downside is that due to the particular production style found on the album the bass often finds itself lost during the heavier moments, although it gains a level of audibility during the ambient sections and is identifiable during certain heavy moments. Aside from these issues there’s nothing major, production-wise, that inhibits the album.
With Controller, Misery Signals have solidified their position as an important band within Metalcore. My only major gripe is that they still haven’t found a way to either limit or remove the more breakdown centric elements of their music, it could be argued that they don’t need to eliminate them, they certainly aren’t anywhere near as bad as the over saturated breakdowns found among the likes of Parkway Drive, still it seems that such competent songwriters are playing it a little too safe. All in all, Controller is the “make” album Misery Signals needed it to be and sets the stage well for a greater progression with their next release.
