The Year Of Our Lord
Dead To You
5.5
As a label, Willowtip has a hard-earned reputation as a home for bands who push the boundaries of technicality, extremity and good taste. With that reputation in mind, this reissue of Dead to You is something of a puzzling release. Boston-based The Year of Our Lord first put out this album on Willowtip in 2001—to virtually no acclaim, as far as I know. And no surprise; their crazy-derivative melodic death metal was pretty stale even when Dead to You originally came out.
In fact, Dead to You might as well warp you back to the beginning of the previous decade. It was a time when Dark Tranquillity and In Flames clones roamed the land, glomming onto every tour and building ten-foot-high piles of disused CD's in local record shops (remember those?). Most such bands, including The Year of Our Lord, have long since disappeared, and for good reason. Competence wasn’t the problem for this particular band. Their performance on Dead to You isn’t quite a study in 21st-century rigidity, but they sure don’t fuck up much. But in 2010, just as in 2001, it’s virtually impossible to get excited over thrash-flavored melodeath, even when it’s well-executed (“Fire Skates the Water,” for instance).
This reissue also includes a second disc compiling the rest of The Year of Our Lord’s recorded output, as well as three (virtually indistinguishable) new tracks that the band has reunited to record. I guess reprinting this rather obscure album is intended to drum up excitement for a reunion effort, but nonetheless, I can’t imagine this release will remunerate for Willowtip. If you’re still lusting after Mikael Stanne coattail riders, then…well, I’m impressed by your endurance and single-mindedness, and you might like the album. Few others will stand to gain from absorbing this thorough retread.
