ArmsBendBack
The Waiting Room
5.5
As I sit here listening to Armsbendback I can only ask myself one thing, “What the hell went wrong here?” I like pretty much every band on Trustkill records, but Armsbendback is easily the weakest link that the label has. The Waiting Room just hits in all the wrong places for me. Started by singer Mike Coasey and guitarist Carson Slovak, Armsbendback is a project that takes a couple different aspects of music and aptly combines them together to form a rather original sound. Sure original can be cool, but it can also be bad. In this case, I don’t care for it at all. Part hardcore, part emo, and part rock, The Waiting Room just seems to aimlessly wander in my mind. Through the numerous times I’ve listened to it I never once found myself stopping and saying, “wow, that part was really cool”. The entire effort just seemed to plod along. I’m not sure whether to attribute this to the boring music or the insanely annoying vokills of Mike Coasey. The background screams are pretty cool, but they are far and few between. Instead you are left with Mike’s voice leading the way through the album. He seems to be a rather talented singer and able to hit the different octaves and notes and whatnot, it’s just the sound of his voice is not remotely enjoyable at all. Music-wise this flows along the lines of Deftones, with that heavy crash work and mid-paced to slow feel and at others much like the infectious melodies of Thrice and softer side of Poison the Well (although hardly as good as either of those two bands). Throw together a mix of bland melodies and weak breakdown style riffs and you pretty much are going to start to grasp what this band sounds like. I can’t recommend this band at all and it still baffles my mind as to how they got signed to Trustkill. Regardless I would say it’s in your best interest to avoid this disc as it hardly offers anything enjoyable at all. If you dig the Deftones then you might like these guys, but I would still recommend downloading some tracks before you purchase.
