Swift
The Absolute Uncontrollable
7.9
Yet more hardcore/emo/metalcore crossbreeding in the form of North Carolina’s Swift, who like He Is Legend and Chiodos deliver one of the more palatable examples of a generally rancid genre.
What sets Swift apart is that their metal persona is actually convincing and well constructed versus using piecemeal injections to beef up their rock/emo tones. With a crunchy, Bay Area production, some smart riffs and a nice balance of earthy roars and clean croons amid the equally balanced rumbling metal and soaring emo, Swift seem to have as much in common with Lamb of God as they do bands like Thursday, Hawthorne Heights etc. Just listen to the opening salvo of first track “Charger” for the Lamb of God comparison. Second track “Release the Wolves” is also pretty ‘metal’ and delivers some excellent finger noodling that should get every hand twiddling in the air at live shows.
What stands out about Swift is their song writing. They actually pen some well crafted, catchy and forceful material that covers enough metal spectrums to keep folks like me happy, but have enough emo fueled caveats to sell records, get airplay and make the Hot Topic crowd happy - a pretty rare mix in today’s scene as far as I’m concerned.
The metal/emo mesh continues throughout the album as Swift either thrash it out (“Bending back as Far as I Can”, “When People Collude”, “Anticoagulant”), rock out (“Questions and Lies”, “Respect the Blade”, “60 FPS”) or simply do their own ballad/acoustic type stuff (“Anticoagulant”, “Join the Dragonlord”, “…Built Us a House”) all filled with empathetic vocals, driving, memorable riffs and stripped of needless quirk and eclectics.
North Carolina’s answer to Dan Swano, producer/drummer Jamie King (Between the Buried and Me, Prayer For Cleansing) twiddles the knobs with all the right levels of commercial clarity and metal clout resulting in a highly listenable album for fans of emo, rock, metalcore and thrash.
Related
SwiftA Communication Manual
6/3/2003