- Listener
GABE
Age: 17
Location: A dark and cold place -- My room.
Joined On: Apr 14, 2008
Website: myccm.org/sector311
Lions, and Tigers, and Bears! Oh, My!
a trashcan near main street
Hey what's up I'm a christian metalhead and I do metal reviews in my blog. http://myccm.org/sector311/blog Plz check it out for a full list from now on I'll put my reviews in here too. I also have a ton of vids on youtube. http://youtube.com/sector311
The Chariot - The Fiancée
I sit down I'm my chair. I get my 2nd generation iPod out of my pocket and I put the black gummy earphones that I bought at Wal-mart into my ears. I proceed to scroll through the artists, and I stop at The Chariot. I had listened to some of this album before, but I had never bought it. Until now. I turn the shuffle off and then I choose the first song, "Back To Back". The song starts out with screaming and a fast snare roll. Then the brutality starts. I start bobbing my head as I sit there in the chair. And then I start screaming "BE GRACE, OH MY GOD!" My mom looks at me like I'm on drugs. I ask for a Pepsi. She says no. This album is a true masterpiece, fusing Hardcore-Punk and Metal together. After the 1 minute 33 second opening song, "They Faced Each Other" starts. It's brutal from start to finish, with unique tempo changes and heavy screams. "They Drew Their Swords" follows that, and it's also an awesome and chaotic song. "And Shot Each Other" is one of the album's strongest, stopping mid-song from a long scream by vocalist Josh Scogin. He screams for a few seconds, takes a breath, and lets out a whining growl. (yes a whining growl) "The Deaf Policeman" is one of the most brutal songs on the album, with its head shattering breakdown at the end. "Heard This Noise" is a pretty good song, but it's probably the weakest. "Then Came To Kill", (the longest song of the album, coming in at five minuets) is one of the most melodic songs on the album, featuring the lead singer of Paramore. In the climax of the song, she sings as Josh screams, and powerful strings, guitars, and drums rock out in the background. "The Two Dead Boys" is another one of the heaviest songs on the album. In one of the lines Josh proclaims: "We built this city on rock and roll". "Forgive Me Nashville" is one of my favorites, and it's the last actual song that the band plays on in the album. Its ends with Scogin screaming "Walk on and you'll never walk alone" and then a harmonica playing a soothing tune. "The Trumpet" is the last song, and the whole song is a church-sounding choir singing. It's a very good contrast and a great way to end a great album. The songs on The Fiancée are short (most of them aren't more than 3 minutes) but thats ok considering that if every song was 5 minutes, it might start to get repetitive. This album gets 5 stars from me.
Underoath - Lost In the Sound of Separation
There was a lot of anticipation for the new Underoath album. Their guitarist, Tim, said it was "way heavier than Define the Great Line." When you hear the drum intro of the opening song, "Breathing In a New Mentality", with it's fast alternation between snare and bass, and the accents on the cymbal, and then you hear distant vocals, followed by all the instruments cutting out, you are starting to think it will be heavier. And then comes the growling and heavy riffing you were hoping for. The breakdown in the song is something you can bang your head to, and its a short but good opening track for this album. As the first three songs finish, they all kind of sound the same. "Emergency Broadcast: The End Is Near" proves to be something more experimental than Underoath usually does. It has a good climactic ending, and then goes to the next song. After that there's two OK songs, but nothing that you'll listen to over and over again and then write your dead grandma a letter telling her how good of a song it is. "The Created Void" is a weird experimental near-disaster that I can barely stand, but "Coming Down Is Calming Down" is a good way to redeem the album. "Desperate Times, Desperate Measures" is a mediocre single that won't leave you breathless, and "Too Bright to See Too Loud to Hear" is a rather soft song that seems out of place. The last track of the album is an OK song, but after the epic and climactic ending that Define the Great Line had, it doesn't seem like much. Some of these songs are good, but this wasn't the "way heavier" I was expecting. I think Underoath should start writing songs that they like instead of what the Post-Hardcore/Emo scene likes. Three stars.
The Showdown - Back Breaker
Ok. Picture a boy. A small, emo boy that could very well be a girl, with hair in his eyes. He has a BFMV t shirt on and girl pants. He is the frontman of a band. All the other members in the band look almost exactly like him. Now burn the picture because The Showdown is not an emo band. In fact, they are quite the opposite. When the band released their sophomore, Temptation Come My Way, it was critiqued by many fans for not being as heavy as their debut record. The had abandoned the hardcore and gone for straight-up southern metal. Back Breaker, their third full-length disc and their first Solid State release, is a mix of their first two albums. It has the hardcore, the blast beats, the whining, Raining Blood-like guitar solos(as opposed to the more melodic solos of TCMW),and the southern influences of the first album. After the opening track "Titanomachy - The Beginning"(the tracks all contain a name from greek mythology, and then a subtitle.), it goes right into "Hephaestus - The Hammer Of the Gods", which has a southern chorus and a NASTY(in a good way) breakdown. The album slows down after five headbangin' tracks for somewhat of a ballad(but never forsaking the southern metal influence) "Cerberus - The Hellhound Awaits". The CD picks up again and then ends with the epic song "Medea - One Foot In Hell", which has a crazy jam session at the end. Back Breaker is a good recover for Solid State. I wish I could give it more than five stars, but I gotta stick to the rules. 5*.
War Of Ages - Arise and Conquer
WARNING!!!!! LISTENING TO THE FOLLOWING ALBUM BEING REVIEWED IN THIS BLOG COULD CAUSE INVOLUNTARY BREAKOUT SESSIONS OF MOSHING AND HEADBANGING. PEOPLE LISTENING TO ARISE AND CONQUER SHOULD NOT DRIVE OR WORK WITH MACHINERY SIMULTANEOUSLY Seeing as how much I care about my peeps, I saw it fit to write that for your safety. This album does make you want to mosh. In fact I almost killed myself while I was mowing and listening to the album at the same time. It begins with "All Consuming Fire", which starts with vocals, until the breakdown attacks without warning. The solo brings to mind something that Metallic would do. The band then forsakes melody as they go from Metalcore to Death Metal in "When Faith Turns To Ashes". The next song is "Through the Flames", not to be confused with "Through The Fire and Flames" by Dragonforce. It's just as catchy though. One of the songs, "Wages Of Sin", even contains some singing. This album ends with a beautiful yet heavy song called "The Deception Of Strongholds", which has double lead lines in it. This is a strong album from War Of Ages, a Christian metal band. And it makes me want to mosh. Five stars.
Sever Your Ties - Safety In the Sea
First came the "Advent disaster". Then came the "Famine plague". And now what comes next for Solid State? The "Sever Your Ties letdown". Wow as corny as what I just said sounds, it's true. I was looking forward to Sever Your Ties after Advent and The Famine were signed to Solid State, and I went to my local grocery store, bought an iTunes card, came home, redeemed it, and bought Safety In the Sea. The album begins with "Voice Like A Nova". It has Hard Rock riffs on the verse, with screaming, and then singing on the chorus. A pretty good song. And then just like The Famine, you listen to the second track, wondering if they put the first song on the album twice. While the single "Captive"(which has been on iTunes for at least two months now) stands out from among the other songs, and the final track, "Don't Fear The Reaper", is a little different, most of the songs use the same guitar, drum, and vocal patterns. I was hoping this album would be so much better than what it is. I give it three stars. The question i have is will The Showdown be able to save Solid State with it's August release?
