Kev Rowland
I always find bands like this wonderfully appealing. Anyone who puts themselves up to be shot back down again by having a name which is unlikely to get them much attention (the lack of spacing is deliberate) from the ‘serious’ music press is all fine and dandy by me. Then add to that a definite refusal to take themselves at all seriously (see any of their photos to see what I mean) and I am intrigued. But of course all of that stands for naught if they are actually rubbish at what they do, but thankfully that is not the case here. Of course, life would be too simple if it were possible to easily put them into a particular musical bucket, so let’s just call them metalcore and leave it at that. They have a new singer in Courtney LaPlante and she definitely suffers from a case of sore throat as she moves from clean vocals to deathlike screams. Behind here there is all sorts of complex distortion and over the top guitars as the guys belt it out.
Now, that is all well and good, but when you hear that Steve Vai – a recognised and undisputed god when it comes to things with seven strings – actually plays on one of these songs, then maybe we ought to take them a bit more seriously. And there is the actual issue with the album – it is way better than it should be, given the way that they seem to approach the music scene, and in this case it is doing them a disservice as some may just pass them by as a goofy gimmick without actually hearing what they are doing. While this is not an essential album by any means, it is much stronger than many others I have heard and overall it has definitely intrigued me so much that I am going to try and seek out their other albums as well. Look past the name, the photos and the artwork, and here is a metalcore album with some balls that is worth investigating.