Year of Desolation
Your Blood, My Vendetta
4.4
The readership of this website, recently has been up in arms about the number of ‘generous’ metalcore reviews this site has been giving. I myself am partially responsible for that. So dear readers, I offer you this; a bad review of a suitably deserving metalcore album. Now can we be friends again?
I like metalcore, in fact I love it. So when I get an album in my beloved genre as bad as this, my hackles go up and the claws come out; “How dare you release an album like this in a genre I've been defending with tooth and nail for 3 years”? You’ve ratified every negative comment said about metalcore in 40 minutes.
Year of Desolation are such an undecided roadmap of hardcore and metalcore clichés that I can’t even begin to name drop every exterior influence drop into their metalcore sandbox; dual screamed/growled vocals, chaos/grind core spazz attacks, ridiculous song titles, hardcore machismo breakdowns, melodic bridges and solos; all of them dumped into one cauldron of clichés.
“I Kicked Sideshow Bob’s Ass” (Leave the quirky song titles to The Number 12 Looks Like You, OK?) kicks off this slab of mediocrity with a quick promising gallop segueing into a mindless angular groove and a forgetful hodge-podge of all sorts of metalcore paradigms, and not one of them impresses me. “Jeffery Dahmer's Cum Soaked Tampon” has some mildly entertaining breakdowns, but they are simply undermined by the flat production. “Keep Laughing Richard” tries to deliver the sort of runaway train off kilter chug but in throw paint on a wall fashion, there are just too many notes going everywhere. Let The Dillinger Escape Plan deal with that style OK guys? After some expected chaos and chugging, “Sheer Terror” tries the band's hand at harmonic solos but fails with aplomb; the effort is there, but there is just no tone or note I haven't heard a thousand times before.
I’ll admit, “Gruesome” has an energetic opening, but again, rather than stick with the opening riff’s basic premise, they insist on peaking each bar with needless squeals and squeaks. Album ‘standout’ “The Legend Of Yellow Boobie” offers up the requisite acoustic intro before actually diving into again an excess note littered breakdown, that would have been fine if left alone to just rumble menacingly. The songs often seem made up on the spot.
By this point in the album, even my metalcore superpowers are tested to the limit by the sheer directionless nature of this album. It's not that these guys are not talented, they are, its just they can’t write fathomable, memorable songs worth a crap. And it’s not just that crazy discordance isn’t normally memorable (The Number 12, LOSA, Into the Moat), it's just these guys can’t commit to it without throwing in some piecemeal random melody or vice versa.
I wanted to like this and defend metalcore, but I just can’t justify giving this a good review as it just simply isn’t a good album. Especially with so many other better choices out there for your metalcore buck. Sorry guys.
Related
Year of DesolationSelf Titled
1/23/2007