Review Summary: A severely underrated set of tunes from one of my gateway bands.
It kind of comes with the territory, but my last two years of high school marked a fun and transitional stage in my life. The end of my innocence was slowly growing nigh, but I was too busy enjoying myself to care or notice. Not that I shirked my studies (I ultimately graduated with honors), but my junior and senior years were filled with a lot of days where my best friend Mike and I would hang out at each other's houses. We befriended each other the first week of freshmen year when we both ended up in the wrong classroom and had to walk across campus together to get to where we needed to be. He was my first
real friend and we had every class together. When we began chilling outside of school, he promptly introduced me to heavy metal, a world yet unknown to my mortal eardrums.
The kind of music he most often enjoyed and then impressed on me was metalcore. He knew I was a bit apprehensive about the lack of singing and the unintelligible vocals, so he actively sought out bands that would balance out the screams with glossy, clean vocals I could actually understand and appreciate. His strategy paid off, because over time, I began listening to the music on my own time, ultimately accepting his invite to what would be my first Vans Warped Tour in the summer of 2014. Crown the Empire was the band that started it all for me, primarily with their iconic debut album
The Fallout. Scranton natives Motionless in White were another staple of our rotation during this time. It became such a routine for us to seek out music, that we'd often browse Comcast's (our cable provider) Music Choice and On Demand services for various songs and music videos. This introduced me specifically to bands such as Of Mice & Men, The Acacia Strain and Miss May I.
The first Miss May I song I heard was called "Gone" and 17-year-old me immediately appreciated the contrast of Levi Benton's fast, incisive screams with bassist Ryan Neff's melodic sung vocals. "Gone" was the lead off single to their fourth album
Rise of the Lion, which enjoyed a strong #21 opening on the
Billboard 200 and #2 at the hard rock format. Benton and Neff make for a good vocal pair, not quite as eye-popping as Andy Leo and Dave Escamilla made the aforementioned Crown the Empire, but perfectly serviceable and interesting nonetheless. Miss May I's discography has seen the quality of their music ebb and flow over the years, and 2014's
Rise of the Lion has always been a fairly underrated album. I bought the disc at Warped Tour for just $5 and bumped it when I got home that night. Many have called the set too generic or derivative for their liking. It's certainly the farthest thing from a revolutionary or game-changing album, but it drums up many nostalgic memories for me that I enjoy revisiting.
"Refuse To Believe" starts us off with that vocal duality we talked about. Benton's throaty screams get us driving along, with Neff's knack for a good hook, and some punishing drums from Jerod Boyd carrying us through the choruses. You can see the breakdown near song's end coming from a mile away, but it still blows the f*cking door down. I actually think that makes the song stronger. Even when the structure (in hindsight, at least) is woefully predictable, it still pays off. "Gone" remains the brightest highlight from the album, continuing with Benton and Neff as a proven and effective vocal tandem. There's a bit more back and forth on this one, though, with Neff adding fills during the verses, before gliding us through that flying and earwormy chorus. "So what about me, when you're gone, how will I move on," he passionately ponders.
Scanning the rest of the album for moments that stick out, "Hero With No Name", with its accompanying music video, stands as a tribute to members of the US armed services. "Darker Days" boasts of screams from Benton that dial up the intensity from prior tracks, with catchy riffs from B.J. Stead and more rad drums from Boyd rounding out the track. Stead's guitar solo later on is f*cking gnarly. The album does start to chaff after a while, with tracks like "My Inferno" adhering to the exact same schematic as all of its predecessor. It's perfectly competent, but you begin to wish the band would experiment or throw a curveball your way.
Rise of the Lion has always gotten a raw deal. It's not going to turn any heads from an artistic standpoint, this much is true. But if you want some good old fashioned melodic metalcore with solid vocals, fun instrumentals and a few cranium-crushing breakdowns, it should do in a pinch just fine. For me, especially, it invokes fond memories of driving up to Mike's house after school, ready to cue up another slew of emo bangers that today are cringe-inducing in the best way. It's been 15 years since he and I met, and we're still extremely close friends. We're planning a trip to the beach next month. Maybe I'll throw a few songs from this album in the road trip playlist for a slice of nostalgia. Fiercely underrated,
Rise of the Lion may be an exercise in tedium, but it's still pretty darn
great.
