The Gentleman Homicide
Understanding The Words We Speak
6
Synopsis:
More craaaazy, angry short haired kids armed with a record deal playing a contrived death metal hardcore/emo mix...
Review:
With the exception of Foreknown, there’s just something about Blood & Ink bands that don’t sit well with me despite my above average levels of tolerance for this kind of music. I don’t know if it’s the label's inability to decently produce their records, or that their bands are basically complete cookie cutter rip-offs of every other band plying the same style.
For example Texas’ The Gentleman Homicide, rough production aside, bring to mind about five different bands I enjoy, yet somehow manage to not be as enjoyable. I hear parts of He Is Legend, Between the Buried and Me, Job For a Cowboy, Life in Your Way and Glass Casket; a damn good mix on paper right? However, TGH just don’t seem to blend all of their caustic, jagged, pseudo deathcore (“Questions, A Promise”), emolodic tangents (“No One Dies Without Deserving Less”) and off kilter spazzcore that has bits of everything scattered around (“The Goodbye and the Morning After”) into one seamless effort, rather more, the tracks contain some OK elements of each in spurts.
For example, nameless “Track 6" (actually the point in the album where things get a bit better) is a really nice, evocative instrumental with some deep melodic layering. The brief programmed techno and acoustic segues in “Being Torn Apart Through Self Realization” is teasingly wrapped between cookie cutter grinding discordance. “Looking Within the Heart of a Man” has some nice dramatic melodies, but they are mired in typical growly breakdowns.
The whole album, while certainly not terrible, as it's far from the worst I’ve heard, but sounds like it came from a 'Do It Yourself' home metalcore band kit and the band messed with the ingredients a bit to make it slightly more oddball and varied. TGH just aren't quite 'there' yet, though I'm not ruling them out yet, they still have a ways to go to be considered in the same class as their many, many peers.
Right now is also bad timing for this band because I’m really enjoying releases from The Demonstration, Dead Man in Reno, Veil of Maya, The Human Abstract and Burn In Silence - all equally contrived, but superbly done examples of the genre.
