Review Summary: Promise, oversaturation, and a decent start
I feel bad for new artists in the metalcore scene, if I’m being honest. You have to come in with all of these preconceived notions of what’s been overdone in the genre compared to what isn’t done enough, what is considered generic, what you can do to stand out from the pack, it’s difficult to say the least. Anyways, here’s Two Sides of Me, an up-and-coming band who plays a sorta combo of metalcore and post-hardcore/swancore, and their second EP,
wither and bloom. As a showing from a band with a small body of work, it’s pretty decent. The band does better when they’re going as heavy as possible, which is pretty effectively shown on “a love too heavy to hold”. The clean vocals are generic, but they get the emotion across well enough, and the clean choruses actually can get a good stir out of your emotions in places (“ur the devil!” is the best example of this). The real issue is just that, if not for being randomly presented with the album art on Apple Music, I would’ve walked by this record in almost any other context. As a debut, it’s not awful, but it's largely nothing you or I haven't heard before. Two Sides of Me will have to do a lot more to stake their claim in an already extremely saturated market.
