Her Candane
No Battle!
6
So here we have the Tribunal Records full-length debut from Salt Lake City’s Her Candane. I feel pretty comfortable guaranteeing that most conservative metalheads will hate this album; this young band plays a chaotic, dissonant breed of rock-inflected metalcore that’s both very fashionable right now and more or less anathema to most of this site’s readership. For those who are interested, however, No Battle! is a reasonably well-executed—if extremely derivative—specimen of the style.
Not as chaotic or abusive as Fear Before the March of Flames or The Number Twelve Looks Like You, this band subscribes to an extremely Every Time I Die-like brand of ‘core…and I mean extremely. From the half-screamed-half-sung vocals to the ‘witty’ song titles (with lots of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!) to the understated Southern feel beneath the discordant riffage, Her Candane is very much a sound-alike act. “Duh. A Giant Scorpion” even features the deservedly maligned hand-clap trick. The band does at least attempt to distinguish themselves from the pack from time to time with a dreamy, delay-heavy post rock segment like those found in “Party! (In A Rocket Ship)” and “Chevy Chase is Good, But He’s No Bill Murray,” but the overall effect is extremely familiar nonetheless.
Now don’t get me wrong, this band does a lot of things right. Her Candane’s overall musicianship is excellent, the production strikes an appropriate compromise between analog grit and modern cleanliness, and there’s even an occasional quality riff in amongst the faceless spazzing (the intro of “An Open Invitation” comes to mind). Ultimately though, this band is copping a decidedly gimmicky and distinctive style that was getting stale a year ago. For the product of a band who claim so ardently to love partying and spontaneity, No Battle! sounds a little too much like calculated, dispassionate imitation for these ears.
