Review Summary: By no means is this a totally different beast.
Volumes is a band that’s difficult to identify or categorize in the space of today’s metalcore scene. Perhaps it’s because of the lack of a strong public figure or personality in the band for the last 3 years after the loss of former vocalist Michael Barr. Perhaps it’s because the band had yet to create a distinct ‘Volumes’ sound in their discography up until this point. Perhaps it's because Volumes really had little to offer to the scene in general. Regardless, a lot can happen in 3 years, and in those years the state of metalcore music has taken a bit of a strange turn. We live in an era, for better or worse, where metalcore musicians have taken an approach to combine different genres together into their music: Pop, rap, hip hop, country--you name it, some modern metalcore band has found a way to fuse it into the genre. Volumes are aware of this, as their latest release “Different Animals “seems to be created with that approach in mind.
The best way to describe “Different Animals” is an inbetween of the band's Issues and Palisades, and the influence that their style of music has had on Volumes is heavily evident here. With the presence of rap verses, poppy vocals, and synth melodies over heavily distorted, high gain guitars and screams, Volumes shows that they're all too aware of the shifting trends of their genre of music. This album is the existence of Volumes in a ‘post-Issues’ world. Unfortunately, they do little to add to what’s already been established in this approach to metalcore. With the inclusion of new clean vocalist, Myke Terry, and ample time to reflect on the state of metalcore music, Volumes seem content to go with the flow and follow in the footsteps of their peers, rather than innovate.
Every song on “Different Animals”--save for a select few--is written all the same: With a catchy pop-inspired hook in the chorus, palm-muted ‘djenty’ guitars, and noisy, sometimes incomprehensible, screams in the verses. This formulaic approach to songwriting becomes jaded and predictable by the fifth track, to the point where one begins to wonder: “What has this band done that hasn’t been done before?”
Most times that Volumes stray from this basic formula, it’s not entirely pleasing, or it’s something in the vein of what other metalcore bands like them would do. Take “On Your Mind,” or “Hope” as examples, which feature awkward, out-of-place rap verses that offer little identifiable dynamic to the songwriting. They feel more insulting and cringe worthy than they do substantive to these tracks. The songs ‘Disaster Vehicle’ and ‘Left for Dead’ exist to appease the ‘hardcore’ crowd, featuring nothing but screams over noise filled, distorted guitars. This could have been seen as a bit of variation in the record, but because of the permeating sound of drop-c, open fret, palm muted guitars, and screams that sound like they were just spat into the microphone, it only serves as an extension of the same formula minus the strongest aspect of the band’s music--Myke Terry’s vocals.
In a few rare instances, the band opts to play around with their song structures and explores their strengths in a tasteful fashion. The songs “Heavy Silence”, “Finite”, and “Pullin’ Shades” are good examples of this. “Heavy Silence” delivers changes to the vocalists roles with the clean vocals in the verses and the screams in the hook. This adds a bit of variation to the overdone ‘screams on verse, cleans on chorus, rinse, repeat until the bridge’ structure. "Pullin’ Shades” is by far the catchiest track on the record, and this is in large part due to Myke Terry’s dominant vocal spot here. The same could be said about the song “Finite” as well.
Unfortunately, a few strong moments won't salvage an otherwise forgettable listen. While Myke Terry is a strong vocalist who offers some beauty to the mix, so many other metalcore bands nowadays are carried by their strong lead vocalist, which makes his presence a hard selling point for the album. With most of the bands instrumental air time being committed to the first three strings and frets of a guitar or the overdone songwriting tropes of the metalcore genre, this album lacks the strength to stand up on it’s own without the little gimmicks it throws out every so often.
It’s hard to coin “Different Animals” as generic because of it’s quirky combination of several genres of music in a fashion that’s currently on the rise in metalcore music. Instead, it’s more accurate to say that Volumes are extremely complacent on “Different Animals.” They do very little to push the envelope in areas that their peers already have, and in the midst of following the lead of those that they take inspiration from, they become ‘another one of those bands.’
