Love and Other Disasters

Sonic Syndicate reached their peak on this album, combining a great mixture of fantastic rhythms and your typical vocal style, one a harsher style than the other. In general, this album is remarkable, in that in would normally appeal to a younger, more scene-ish audience, with songs like Jack of Diamonds acting much like a song that would be set to get a friend into the scene, or band for that matter. What this record lacks in complexity, it more than makes up for it with how much of a sing-a-long style album this is, and honestly, you'd be a fool to not realise how difficult it would be to do that in this genre.

They appear to have well and truly taken a serious musical learning curve after their previous release, as they've clearly taken on a much more listener friendly approach to recordings. Blue Eyed Fiend and Callous appear to have some serious roots throughout this album, with them somehow releasing My Escape as a ballad on this album, which provided a nice change in musical direction from everything else on it.

The best song off this album are by a mile or two is Jack of Diamonds, merely due to how catchy it is, which possibly isn't the best attribute for a song in this genre to possess, but hey, we're all allowed a guilty pleasure aren't we? But this isn't so much of a guilty pleasure, this release is pure and simply the best they've done, the best in the genre for that year, and on par with some of the better releases of the last decade.
Love it or hate, Sonic Syndicate were encaptured in this release alone and should've released this album before Eden Fire as they'd of been a much much much bigger band than what they were prior to Richard and Roland leaving.

Sonic Syndicate, a band formed with intentions of sounding like Soilwork and In Flames, present to you their biggest piece of shit yet: Love and Other Disasters.

Sonic Syndicate (SS for short) used to be a decent band when they only had 'Eden Fire' out. It wasn't anything groundbreaking and it surely wasn't a masterpiece, but it was just modern melo-death with some -core thrown in. Then they released their follow-up, Only Inhuman, which was a major piece of generic shit. Finally, they release this generic piece of metalcore/modern rock wanna-be-melodic shit. They went from a Soilwork/In Flames influenced band to a modern rock band. SS really give off the attitude that they're "rawkers" with their 'Jack of Diamonds' (beware, it's bad) music video. The whole video is plagued with cliches like fast cars, hot babes and outdoor activities. Yeah, you guys are super cool! Now shove those car rentals and paid prostitutes down your humongous throat and shut the fuck up.

This album goes no where. Every song has your typical verse/chorus/verse/chorus/lame solo or bridge/chorus x2 formula so there's really no progression at all. There's not a single strong song on here because they all sound the fucking same. It's all watered-down metalcore with a 'rawker' attitude (spiked hair, highlights, dark clothes and the other cliches of rock music). Yawn. We've seen this shit before.

None of these guys can play their instruments for shit. The guitarists never scale down the fret board because if they added any variety in their tone they'd lose half their scene kid fanbase. Hell, enough ragging on the guitarist, it's the vocalists who need a lesson in singing (stop filtering your vocals through program, you both sound like shit) and screaming. If there was a contest for having the worst vocals in music, these two reprobates would be up there with the dude from Waking the Cadaver, the dude from Theory of a Deadman and all the black metal kvlt bands. These guys need to choke on each other's dick and stop causing migraines through sound waves. Their raspy, half-assed vocals do nothing beneficial for the band.

This album really isn't melodic, either. Adding a sing-along chorus works when your front man can sing, but when he can't it's best to either kick him out of the band or give him some vocal lessons. And as I said before, the guitars never stray from a rhythmic sound so the only melody on this album are the occasional keyboards, which aren't really that melodic. They just fit in with the song so you're left with nothing more than downtuned emo shit.

All in all, this album is a quick cash-out for Sonic Syndicate. It's banal, it's stupid and it's the epitome of a sell-out band. Recycled riffs misplaced everywhere, happy-go-lucky fun time choruses that all the 13-year-olds can sing along to and ultimately, piss-poor song writing. Do not support this record or any of their future endeavors until both vocalists are gone (one of them quit, thank god). Then maybe they'll be worth looking at. However, until then, Grab 'Eden Fire' then leave these poor sods to wither in their own stupidity. Your sell out music can't buy you respect, assholes.

Love and Other Disasters was a major disappointment because I was expecting something along the lines of the greatness of Only Inhuman, instead we get a big change in sound and a major commercial step into mediocrity. Most songs on this album are very similar and there are a lot of filler songs. The sound itself is mainly a very keyboard driven hard rock/metalcore album with a lot of lame choruses and it just fails in every aspect that Only Inhuman triumphed in. The songs themselves are mainly lame repeated single notes riffs and a fair amount of metalcore breakdowns, the leads are usually simplistic and don’t really draw you in.

Sonic Syndicate used their unique metalcore/melo-death style with a heavy keyboard use for atmosphere and background to great effect on Only Inhuman. On Love and Other Disasters the songs are boring, the keyboard atmosphere isn’t really present, and guitar solos are pretty much non present. The melo-death influence from Sonic Syndicates first two albums is pretty much gone replaced with a hard rock kind of atmosphere with boring simplistic riffs. The vocals are just sub par screaming and metalcore melodic singing while solid doesn’t really contribute to the album. Finally Love and Other Disasters songs are almost all filler material and seam like rehashes off of Only Inhuman without the high quality.

Love and Other Disasters seems like a rush job to me since it was only a year since the release of Only Inhuman when this album came out. The songs aren’t cohesive and contain to much variety with no meaning. Overall this album is a big step down from Sonic Syndicate’s previous releases and it’s the sign that their leaving the metal scene and wanting to go completely mainstream. Best songs are Encaged, Hellgate: Worchester, Power Shift, and Affliction these songs are the only ones that actually stand out from the mediocre and all they are is solid songs at best. I do not recommend this album to any type of metal head.

-10 points Album is filled with filler
-10 points Melodic vocals while solid don’t to the album
-20 points Songs not cohesive and have too much variety