Review Summary: An unfortunately dull affair that does little more than remind listeners of better bands from previous decades.
Hance Alligood is a pretty solid vocalist; his clean vocals have a fair amount of strength behind them and a decent enough range, similarly his harsh vocals are more than adequate for your typical sing/scream post-hardcore outfit. It’s a shame then that for the most part he’s known for his time during Woe, Is Me a band that criminally underutilised a talented member, granted they were terrible at everything so you can’t really expect too much.
On Favorite Weapon’s debut Alligood seems to be reaching back into his earlier days as frontman for Oh, Manhattan; Sixty Saragossa falls into a very similar category as Spiritual Warfare; at its best it’s a clone of Cove Reber era Saosin, Secret & Whisper, Of Machines and their ilk and at its worst it’s pretty much the same. In fact Sixty Saragossa’s biggest failing is that it can’t shake the feeling that the band is trying really hard to be part of a bygone movement in post-hardcore music, the songs would work perfectly if they were actually Saosin songs from 2006, but they’re not, they’re in fact “new” songs written in 2014.
Unfortunately Favorite Weapon seem fairly uninspired; Alligood has surrounded himself with competent musicians but competency and passion are two very different things, sure the guitarists work well at crafting melodies and the occasional heavy section but nothing stands out as being particularly inventive or original, the same is true for the rest of the instrumental section; they’re just sort of “there”, it’s a shame that there’s so little to say about the band because they’re not doing anything wrong, they just aren’t doing anything exciting.
Alligood occupies a similar space, he’s certainly talented, but you wouldn’t call him entertaing or inspired on this outing. The lyrics are fairly typical of the genre with very little standing out (expect your fair share of “lies, torture, love, not caring”, etc.) which is a shame because you’d think given the fairly volatile years he’s had, there’d be plenty of stuff to seem genuinely pissed off about, but in this instance you wouldn’t be wrong in assuming he’s catering to the angsty teenager crowd without actually meaning any of the things he’s saying, or singing rather.
At most Favorite Weapon have demonstrated potential, they’ve got a strong vocalist and competent albeit lazy and uninspired instrumentalists, potentially if the band is able to bottle lightning and develop a level of interest in what they’re doing then it’s possible they could open up some new territory for the seemingly dying post-hardcore genre. Until then Sixty Saragossa stands as yet another let down from the ex-Woe, Is Me movement, Favorite Weapon is like a firecracker; they make a bit of noise and then they fizzle out just as quickly.
