The Autumn Offering
Fear Will Cast No Shadow
3.6
Oh, man…
In all honesty, the first twenty seconds of this record are sorta cool. The Autumn Offering bust out of the gate with a svelte melodeath guitar swoop, compounded with some meaty rhythms. And then…the vocals kick in.
For the life of me, I have no idea why anyone, inside of the band or out, would find this type of performance acceptable within the context of a “metal” band. Sounding like he jumped straight out of a Sum 41 record and into David Hasselhoff’s car, vocalist Matt McChesney hams things up to the extreme. The clean vocals are pure pop-punk posturing; you can just see this guy winking at the teenage girls in the audience as he croons the seven syllables of the word “down”. As for his “harsh” tones? Well, have you ever stepped on a dying cat with laryngitis? No? Neither have I, but I’m more of a dog person.
Anyway, as the album slogs on, those first twenty seconds prove to be even more of a tease than originally thought. Failing to compensate for their frontman’s total lack of redeeming qualities, the rest of the band simply relies on the outline dictated on page 3 of “An Introduction to Fifth-Rate Melodic Death Metal: 12th Edition”. Combining this uninspired skeleton with pedestrian, hip-hop inspired drumbeats, they craft a type of music known to some as “American Metalcore”. Interestingly enough, there’s really no metal to be found, much less any ‘-core’, but I suppose that the irony is lost on the 13-to-16 year-old demographic that these jokers are aiming for.
The holiday season is rapidly approaching, so if there’s a little dude on your shopping list that needs something to bridge the gap between Hoobastank and As I Lay Dying, download this album and burn him a copy. Actually, scratch that…just get him something that doesn’t suck total ass. I hear that painted toys from China are all the rage these days.
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