xLooking Forwardx
The Path We Tread
6.4
xLooking Fowardx plays a bare bones mix of fast old school hardcore and metal breakdowns that looks good on paper but falls short in reality. While the description in the last sentence can describe a host of bands out there right now, the best ones spice up this formula with inventive tempos/melodic riffs, gang vocals that break up the monotony of a single screaming singer and craft breakdowns that would make any metalcore band proud. xLooking Forwardx doesn’t deliver on any of these.
xLooking Forwardx’s stripped down approach, often devoid of melody, is plagued with unimaginative riffs and text book, paint by the numbers breakdowns that remind me of a bad sitcom going for the cheap, predictable laugh rather than doing something different (it’s a show about nothing!).
Where they do show a pinch of originality is in the occasional rock riff, sounding somewhat like the Bars, but these brief flourishes are sandwiched in between an endless stream of monotone vocals barking about typical straightedge fare. My personal favorite being the Christian/sXe combo about drinking yourself to hell (I must be on the 9th ring by now!). They do bring a tad more aggressive sound to their hardcore with a rapid fire double kick drum instead of the usual kick-snare combo but when you have 19 songs and a singer with no range, you need to figure out more ways than speedy drum work to make them sound different.
I think this band could take some pointers from some of their peers. They could look to fellow straightedge band Champion to see how to make fast hardcore sound fun and exciting. They could look to Paint It Black for pointers on how to use a monotone singer more sparingly in a less than two-minute song environment and they could look to Comeback Kid for how to weave hardcore and beefy breakdowns into an enjoyable combination. Of course that means this band would sound like all those other bands and I’m sure there’s people that will enjoy this more spartan approach to hardcore but it’s just not my cup of tea.
