The Seventh Cross
Scorched By The Flames Of Vengeance
5.8
You know, I was expecting something different from The Seventh Cross. For some reason, I actually thought this was going to be a unique album, and I wanted to like it. At first the conceptual Scorched By The Flames Of Vengeance held a few moments of promise at the beginning with the eclectic piano & string introduction, and when electricity is added it sounded different for about a minute or so. It was a very short minute or so. Too short.
Then those vocals entered the picture, the breakdowns started, and all hopes of innovative originality were washed away. See, the thing is this really isn’t a horrible CD at all, but Scorched…is very unremarkable in comparison to the heavyweights of the scene. The riffs are entirely simplistic and plain, the pacing is daunting, and those coarse, flatly rasping vocals remain the same through the entire album without any sort of change until the very end of the final track, to the point where it almost sounds like the singer is losing his voice as the album progresses. If you like Texas Is On Fire, you’d like this, if you’re into Of Graves And Gods, or possibly Zao, you’ll get into this. The music strays away from too many peppy Swedish melodies, and there is definitely more metal here than there is core, in fact, there’s not really much hardcore here at all. There’s not a bunch of huge bass bumps, or chest-pounding swaggering hardcore, and also doesn’t reach into the Dark Tranquillity riff bag with any sort of irritating frequency, so in some ways, The Seventh Cross aren’t too entirely predictable or derivative, but there still is nothing here to write home about.
It’s easy to review really good, or really bad albums, and unfortunately The Seventh Cross have offered nothing to love, nor hate. What cool parts do exist are castrated by the abysmally thin production. At times it seems as though they’ll pull something out of their hat and roll with it, and instead they choose to follow the well-beaten path, which is a shame since there are trace elements of a much, much better band present, and some of the speedier moments show great promise. They assemble riffs in odd ways that remind one of old school death metal in a way, and you can tell the band is trying to be different, but in the process, come across sounding like many other metalcore bands who are trying something different. Some of it works, and some of it is simply commonplace.
I don’t really know what else to say. With some desperately needed vocal variation, a clearer and more individual musical point of view, and better production, maybe The Seventh Cross will give us something fresh-sounding on future releases. They simply need to raise their game and do something new, because with a passing listen, this sounds like any of the other dozens of bands who are playing the style now. I want to hear more, but not if this is all they have to offer. I cannot dismiss this band, but I can’t recommend them to anyone on a tight metal budget either, but at least check them out if you see an MP3 floating around.
