Once NothingThis self proclaimed blue collar metal band is from Pittsburgh, PA and they play metalcore with some rather annoying nuances that I will talk about later. I don't know much about these guys except for the fact that they are a Christian faith based band and have released a full length previous to this one.
Musically, this 12 song disc is pretty straight forward metalcore but that isn't exactly the problem. I mean everyone talks about how mundane metalcore has become but I mean lets not kid ourselves, every genre whether it's hardcore, punk, metal, hip hop, has the same shit being done and there are literally tens of thousands of clones in every genre. So I can deal with a metalcore band that doesn't bring anything new to the table but is proficient at what they do. But as Peter Griffin says, what really grinds my gears is the fact that these guys seemed to have hopped onboard with countless other bands that incorporate some southern riffs into their song writing. I mean I could totally understand it if you're from Tennessee or Texas or some shit but these guys are from western Pennsylvania, not too much southernness there. Another reason that I can't get down with these guys is because not only do they seem to hop on what's hot but they are a Christian band. I have already gone into long diatribes about this but I just hate how a average at best Christian band has all kinds of fans because their "followers" can't listen to anything remotely "blasphemous" so for me to like a Christian band they have to really floor me (go back and find my review for With Blood Comes Cleansing), and these guys don't come close to flooring me.
With all that being said, I will go a little more in depth as to why I just flat out don't like this record. When they are playing more straight ahead metalcore they are fairly decent, even their breakdowns that they like to rely heavily on aren't too bad. It's just when they completely butcher the transitions of the songs by trying to throw in a horrible wannabe southern riff that completely derails the song as far as I'm concerned. Another big mistake was throwing a horrible soft ballad right in the middle of the album. I can barely deal with them as is, unless it's a jaw dropping display of instrumentation, but even then I'd rather have that end off an album. And I will give the singer props for not attempting some horrible clean singing but he does do a couple of things that I could really do without; first, when he says "Aw, swing it" going into a breakdown, I mean it cranked the cheese level up to 11 and then his overall screaming voice just starts to grind on me. His vocal patterns remain the same for the most part and the little scream/trail off thing that he does got on my nerves as well. All those things ruin anything good that the band was able to do.
If the southern riffs that they injected throughout this 12 song album wasn't enough to show the listener their southern/western side than the layout of the album sure did. The layout is printed on nice unfinished matte stock. The front cover has a sheriff on the front holding a gun with a badge on the opposite side of the page. The back of the booklet has the face of the guy standing on the front. Overall, the layout isn't bad, if only it was used for a southern rock band or something.
Rating: 2/5
Songs Worthy of Replay: 'Gunfire Is The Sound of Freedom'
Synopsis: This band just seems content to hop on what's hot and use their Christian label to propel them to underground success, and that's fine but I'll pass there's a lot better stuff out there. And for all metalcore bands out there, unless you're actually from the south, don't bother with the pseudo-southern riffs.