Killed By Memories
Forever Doesn't Last
6.1
Just when it seems like everyone is playing metalcore nowadays, here’s one more US band to join the fray. Killed By Memories have all the necessary ingredients to melt right into the crowd. Thick breakdowns? Yup. Occasional spoken lyrics? Yup. A healthy appreciation of the Gothenburg sound? Yup. Three word name? Oh yeah. The catch is that they don’t do anything amazing with these ingredients. This is functional metalcore, enough to get the head bobbing, but it just doesn’t make much of an impression. Their sound is a balance between the straightforward force of Most Precious Blood and the smart sense of melody that Unearth employs amongst their fiery riffs.
The music plods along, more content to be bludgeoning than scorching. They like their breakdowns slow and ominous, and their screams full of heart. Eric’s vocals range from a hoarse scream to a nice, standard growl, to a weak spoken voice that should really just be nixed altogether. Chris and Bobby’s guitarwork is fairly interesting, being tight throughout, and frequently harmonizing with each other. Their melodies tend to be somber, a bit like those of Undying.
Forever Doesn’t Last has nine real songs spread over 33 minutes. The production on the album is a bit low-budget, but that’s forgivable – the music comes through pretty clearly, it just lacks depth. “Restrain” opens the album aggressively, although they overdose on breakdowns. “The Darker Side Of…” is a much more complete song, with melodies, breakdowns, etc. “Without You” packs a hearty dose of melody into four minutes, without sounding blatantly like In Flames, as similar bands have been known to do.
This new album by Killed By Memories is hardly rewriting the book of metalcore, but I can see its appeal. Their only flaw is being average, which means that depending how you look at it, they are better than a large group of bands, although the genre leaders have nothing to fear yet from these Jersey boys. For the fan of the genre that is sick and tired of all the emo-influenced fluff seeping into the scene, this could fit the bill.
