Life In Pictures
Songs From the Sawmill
5.4
I generally hate EPs, and especially hardcore/metalcore EPs considering the genres penance for brevity. So here with Arizona’s Life in Pictures you actually get 5 fairly lengthy songs of respectable but unspectacular metalcore. You know the drill; hardcore breakdowns, attitude and screamed vocals laced with harmonic dual guitars imported from Sweden. However, Life in Pictures do have some character, in that the guitars are far more rooted in twiddly Iron Maiden-isms, invoking a more traditional heavy metal gloss to their typically quirky and politically/socially motivated metalcore aura.
The five songs are all well delivered, well played and well produced, but each one seems to sound like the last with all having equal amounts of squealing dual guitars and harmonic cantering, but none really moving me enough to warrant replay. The melody is never quite as overwhelming as say Undying, Misery Signals or Hamartia, but instead a stuttering, layered melody that tries to be Shai Hulud with weight but doesn’t really succeed. Still, the guitar work is always interesting and busy, if at the expense of memorability. There are some highlights within the songs: the breakdown and subsequent soling of “Red Fall”, the peaceful yet driving acoustic break of “An Aging Monarch”, but for me an EP should be an attention getting collection of highlights that make me wait with baited breathe for a forth coming full length album, but Life in Pictures never invokes that feeling. I enjoyed it, but won’t actively seek out anything further. Through the Eyes of the Dead’s EP, The Scars of Ages is an EP done right.
At the end of the day, Songs from the Sawmill is a decent little EP, but the question is can it fight for air amid an overflowing genre, and get airtime amid my vastly growing metalcore collection? Probably not, as Life in Pictures simply don’t offer enough to the hardcore listener to pull them away from more established, and frankly better bands. Still, they are talented and have flashes of ability that if fully fleshed out might make fans take notice.
