Blessed By A Broken Heart
All Is Fair In Love And War
5.2
While Blessed By a Broken Heart are capable of producing some decent metallic hardcore very reminiscent of Bleeding Through, their emo and hardcore-influenced metal can get very annoying at times.
The Illinois six-piece seems to not take themselves too seriously, while at other times taking themselves way too seriously. They try to be funny, although really aren’t successful as they do things tons of other bands have done before. The album cover features an ‘80’s metal version of their logo, as they poke fun at classic metal a lot. The band even throws Halford-like singing and black metal harmonies into their music, in a way that might be funnier to the trendiest younger generation metalheads - you know, the kind to wear Manowar T-shirts but don’t own any Manowar records. In “Mic Skillz” the band does a death metal rendition of the alphabet, which is just annoying. And song titles like “That Knife Ain’t for Butter” show the band’s lighter side as well.
But at other times BBABH seem to take themselves a bit too seriously with a strong emo influence and a lot of parts with clean singing/hardcore spoken word, which sound like the singer is crying. So many bands do this nowadays and these guys don’t even seem to make an attempt at sounding different. The very fucking annoying male/female duet reciting “She loves me/She loves me not” in “Some Kind of Wonderful” is not beautiful, or whatever they think it is, and leads me to believe this metal is more for girls. They even use keyboard synths once in a while like in “Courting Mary”, which they probably think is very creative but just sounds like Bleeding Through.
On the up-side, Blessed By a Broken Heart are capable of producing some pretty brutal moments and sick, choppy guitarwork, as they have three guitarists. Of course a good production helps the band’s case, which All Is Fair In Love And War does have. However, I’d rather hear poorly produced good music than this, and if I saw these guys play live I’d probably laugh.
Related
Blessed By A Broken HeartPedal To The Metal
9/2/2008