Review Summary: After a unfortunate lineup change, Woe, Is Me becomes everything it shouldn't.
I am a fan of Number(S). It's a well crafted full-length with amazing vocals, poetic lyrics, beautiful lead guitar, there's a lot about this LP i like. When I first heard about almost all the members leaving, I was pretty concerned about what would Genesi[S] be like. Musicianship featured on the reissue of the first effort was okay, except for Andrew Paiano, who is a poor songwriter, and Austin Thornton, who was getting worse and worse at the time. I write this in the times when all is said and done about this band, but after listening to Genesi[S] I had to just let go of my disappointment.
First of all, all the characteristics that made W,IM good in the first place are gone. There's no soul influenced, beautiful vocals from Tyler Carter, no leads from Tim Sherill, hell, even Ben Ferris' background vocals and climatic synths could save this album a little. Now we have cringeworthy performances from Hance Alligood, chugging from both Andrew Paiano and Kevin Hanson, terrible lyrics about arrogance of the past band members, MIDI drums, and a screamer who keeps the same tonality during the entire album.
Album starts with D-Day, a 35 seconds lasting intro consisting of samples from President Nixon's speech, along with some sounds of a machine. D-Day leads straight into F.Y.I., the most memorable song on the album. Song features no clean vocals, starts with Doriano Magliano screaming over the machine sounds from D-Day, before breakdowns come in and don't stop until Family First. All songs are filled with mindless, slow breakdowns, no band members show any diversity in these 8 tracks.
The hooks made me cringe literally every time - Alligood decides to over-pronounce every word he says to let you know he really hates Carter. If I had to mark any singer's performance better than the rest, I'd say it's the beginning of Nothing Left To Lose. Of course lyrics are horrible, but at least the melody was decent and maybe just a bit catchy. However, Hance proves himself as an okay vocalist during two last songs, first one being Family First where he sings about the band never giving up (too bad they broke up a year after), and does that in a passable way, showing he has some talent unlike other 5 band members. The second song only with clean vocals is an acoustic version of Nothing Left To Lose, this time only the rest of the band doesn't ruin the song with sludgy chugging or Doriano screaming lines like "WE ARE COMING FOR YOU, WE ARE COMING FOR YOU, BLEGH!" (yes, he does the "blegh" on almost every song). His last performances are the only reason this album is not a 1.
Austin Thornton is the force ruining the album the most. Not to mention the fact he is a terrible person, after the release of Of Machines' debut album (which is amazing by the way) he completely lost any skill. His drumming on Number(S) wasn't anything special, however he was able to play fast and keep the listener entertained by drumming. The fastest Thornton can play on Genesi[S] is on Call It Like You See It (such an amazing title, easily the worst song on the entire album), and the tempo of the song is something around 140 BPM, not to mention he didn't even perform it; all the drums are MIDI here. Not being able to perform a simple kick pattern at the average tempo of 90 BPM, not being able to write a drum part faster than circa 140 BPM, keeping drumming rely on kick patterns makes up for a terrible drummer. I'm glad they kicked Austin out after this, they would've made something worse than this if they didn't do that.
Lyrics are atrocious; all being about Carter, Bohn, Sherill and Ferris brothers leaving the band, because of Thornton's arrogance and acting as a "mastermind" of the band, the guy you have to listen to because it's his band, the guy who always knows the best. Craig Ericson thought it's a great material for making a drama; he forced Woe, Is Me to write lyrics about them and diss them on literally every track. Even F.Y.I. here doesn't stand for For Your Information; it stands for *** You Issues (the band Carter and Bohn formed after leaving). I didn't really mind it before Doriano screamed "You're so proud of the one liners you wrote, it must be hard to talk *** with a dick in your throat. POW POW POW!". After that I was sure there's no hope for the lyricism.
Genesi[S] is an overall mess, it's the effect of a band being pushed to do something and to diss people, who are, in fact, friends. It wasn't the band's fault that the lyrics are what they are and that there's no effort put into songwriting. I mean Paiano is a terrible writer anyway, but if they had more time and space to work, I'm sure they'd craft something maybe not as good as Number(S), but something worth a listen.
