Review Summary: Half decent debut for local Sydney metalheads.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; Prog rules. There is no genre superior to Prog, and there will never be a Prog album superior to Aqualung. With that said, I'd like to set up a rating system. For my review of this album we'll have what we're going to call 'Lunguistics', which is essentially an Aqualung comparison list. Let's begin
For those of you who aren't hip, An Arrow To The Knee, aka Geoffrey Leonard Jr. is a band which formed in 2010 in Sydney, Australia, and model themselves somewhat, at least in stage names, after legendary grub Geoffrey Leonard. While lyrically you can't hear that here, or make out much of anything, I feel that it's still crucial to point that out. I'm afraid that anybody who is against ATTK's rather unique feelings about the subject of 80 year old child molesters. If you're not familiar with Geoffrey Leonard, please view this link to better inform yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XSB4sQGT_4
This man obviously had a large impact on the band, as one of the members' stage names is Geoffrey Leonard Jr. Why the band chose to name themselves 'An Arrow To The Knee' is a mystery to me, and it's probably better left as such, but getting onto the music, it may not be what you expect. The first track, 'The Dawning', is a rather straightforward Death Metal song about what I'm assuming is the dead rising. The vocals on here sound a little bit like a vacuum cleaner, albeit a vacuum cleaner with unmatched brutality, and the guitars and drums have a very grimy, and although it doesn't in any way detach the listener, it is still rather surprising to hear a standard DM song with such decidedly old school production come out not only this year but on what sounds like it would be an awful deathcore EP.
From there the second track goes way downhill. Not only to they break out the rapping, but also the autotune, and this is where it becomes evident that they made a mistake. Now, Don't get me wrong, I like autotune, but when people just throw it haphazardly over they're vocals, it has a tendency to just dicker the overall feel and sometimes even the mix itself, giving the vocals a hollow, tinny sound. Here it does just that, and this moves my mark away from a 4 to a solid 3.
In keeping with my Prog tendencies, I've rated this album based on it's similarities to the Legendary aqualung. Let me put it this way; it failed miserably.
