Review Summary: They "took time for granted and paid the price!"
Oceans Ate Alaska, a fairly new metalcore band hailing from Birmingham, England, follow up their debut 2012 EP, “Into The Deep,” with their first full-length album, “Lost Isles,” coming in at 13 tracks and about a 45 minute total run time, with a short intro song and an interlude track.
Right off the bat, the intro track, FourThirtyTwo, starts off with some distorted samples before it kicks off into some aggressive blast beat drumming and pretty technical guitar work. Unfortunately, as anyone who listened to the debut EP will corroborate, the drum work on the intro track and throughout both of OAA’s albums, sounds overly programmed to the point of it sounding artificial. After that intro track, comes the lead single of the album, Blood Brothers, which is the first track to showcase the vocalist. On this track, and the rest, James, the lead vocalist usually sticks to a mid-to-high scream, but often growls as low as the best of them. His unclean vocals are best showcased on the track, High Horse. The only issue with the vocalist are the clean vocals, which, thankfully, are not used as much as on the EP, but are still used on a few tracks. They cleans actually sound worse on “Lost Isles” than they do on the EP, with less emotion but more strain and a much heavier accent than before, making him sound like a ridiculous rip-off of Oli Sykes. The cleans are used the most on the second single, Vultures and Sharks and the track, Floorboards, which, ironically, are two of the most standout tracks on the album.
There are breakdowns, a sh*tload of them, with every single track containing at least one. There are a few tracks with some very odd choices that either don't fit at all or are not expanded upon enough. One example is the bridge of the song Floorboards, in which, a cowbell overpowers literally every other instrument, making it sound ridiculous, however the shouted gang vocals later in the same song sound promising but the song ends before they are fully utilized.
The main drawback of this album is the overall sameness of it; every song sounds just alike enough for none of them to stand out but also for none of them to suck anymore than the others. There are few, if any, catchy leads or lyrics that will get stuck in your head, which makes the album as a whole, forgettable, the worst fate for an album, as even terrible stuff is remembered.
Recommended songs:
Vultures and Sharks
Floorboards
Linger
