Review Summary: A solid debut from a band with a promising future.
I’ll get straight to the point:
Maybe In Another Life is—despite its flaws—a very solid album. The debut from Australian melodic hardcore act, Bloom, carries enough emotional weight and energy to overcome its somewhat uninspired songwriting, and there were enough spots of brilliance to keep me interested all the way through.
A (probably unnecessary) intro track segues into the breakneck title track, which is—to the band’s credit for consistency—a good showcase of what pretty much most of the album sounds like. Bloom choose to focus on the energetic emotion of their music over technical showcasing, which (for the most part) works well. Unfortunately a lot of the songwriting through the first four tracks blends together to the point of being almost unrecognizable from one song to the next. Many of the same songwriting patterns are used with reckless abandon, creating a sort of stale atmosphere amid what is supposed to be a thrill ride.
Starting with “Carve Yourself Into My Lungs,” however, Bloom slow down the pace of their record. The aforementioned track, along with “You & I” and “Fragments of a Dream” attempt to harness more of that emotional gravitas while foregoing the aggression that makes the top third of the album interesting. Again, the band does it well, albeit they let it go on a bit too long. “Carve Yourself…” is perhaps the most interesting of these three tracks, with clean and harsh vocals trading blows in a slow burn of a track that achieves a proper balance. “You & I” is not bad by any stretch, but does not have much of interest, while “Fragments of a Dream” feels completely unnecessary.
Don’t worry though, Bloom manage to save the best for last, with the just-over-a-minute “Laughing Stock” (unironically one of the best tracks on the record) taking off the kid gloves and leading into the one-two punch of “An Exit” and “Through the Threshold, Beyond the Bend.” These two tracks are probably the most cohesive and interesting on the record, not to mention the breakdown halfway through “An Exit” somehow being one of the most exhilarating moments on the whole thing.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take too long to get to the end, as the album is a lean thirty minutes in length—and between the inoffensive length, halfway decent production, vocals that are actually quite adept, predictably cringeworthy lyrics, and a whole lot of adrenaline,
Maybe In Another Life is ultimately a winner. While this is a debut and there’s room to grow, Bloom is probably one of the more promising ones I’ve seen in a bit. Provided they clean up their songwriting a bit, shake things up once in a while, and add just a touch of finesse, they have a bright future ahead.
