Into Languish and Decay

Well it is pure mediocrity if you are looking for a bland metalcore band that thinks they play thrash metal. Yea that’s about it, I could really end the review right here, but seeing that this would not get accepted I shall continue. I can tell the band is actually attempting at making good music but when the same exact thing is played in every song it gets boring. So I found this band while going on one of my random rampages for multiple bands within one genre, this one started with Necrodeath, which would have been a good place to stop.

Let’s start off with the best part of the album, that would be in the song Unleash the Ferocity, there is a breakdown in the last quarter of the song, that is really good but other than that this is really boring. I didn’t realize I was listening to an As I lay Dying rip-off until the 3rd or 4th song, that is horrible because they don’t even do it as good as As I lay Dying, that shouldn’t be that hard to pull off. I can’t put it together right now but there are a couple opening riffs and a few choruses that sound distinctly similar to other songs, I am not going to search for who it is right now because I know I will never find it. The one song that is bothering me the most though is the chorus which the sound is stolen from somewhere and the breakdown has the same opening riff as Lamb of God’s Hourglass, then they use riffs from As I Lay Dying’s The Darkest Nights.

The best element of the album is easily the vocals. They are really weak but at least he doesn’t ruin them. Maybe they needed to mix is vocals better and make it the prominent element. But Jokke is versatile, he can pull of the black metal screams, melodeath and a few straight up death metal lines in here, but they still sound weak because of production. Since he is the vocalist I will guess he wrote they lyrics too, not necessarily true but I don’t care. The lyrics are really simplistic, obviously have no meaning (if they were meant to they constitute epic fail), and the choruses are lame. I know a lot of times choruses are just a few shouted words, but in every song there is one or two words that are chosen to be yelled from 4-8 times in one chorus, think of variety it isn’t that hard.

I am not saying that they cannot play their instruments well; I am just saying that it is really boring. The guitar has a few moments where there could be something cool going on, but no, there must be only about 4 riffs throughout the album that were not repeated in other songs. I would expect a bit more technicality from a band that is labeled black/death/thrash metal, the songwriting is just extremely simplistic. The guitars are actually very slow and I cannot get the As I Lay Dying sound out of my head. The guitars are not bad, but very amateur and need a lot more practice. I can surely see potential.

I will not bash the horrible production on drums; I know some bands don’t have enough money to get good recording. Even if the drums can’t be recorded well they could still be played well, not on this album though. An orangutan could make better drum playing while throwing feces at the kit. Extremely, extremely repetitive. Barely any double bass, this of course is not a bad thing but if you are going to rip off As I Lay Dying you need double bass up the ass. Bad rolls, bad crash, bad timing; seriously the drummer seems to be off a bit with the guitar (maybe it is the other way around), but he mistimed some of his hits with prior playing. He will be trying to do a basic sounding beat and then it sounds different 20 seconds later even though it is supposed to be the same beat.

Why have a bass player if you cannot hear him on the album? That is all for the bass.

I must mention A Thoughtful Sadness, usually when there is an instrumental song they are made to highlight a skill or just to plain show off; in other cases interludes or intros. So this song is extremely boring as well. They do not have enough skills yet to show off. There is no point to this song it might as well be just another interlude.

So overall the album has bad production, whoever mixed the album cannot mix and should be fired. The only time guitar should be higher in the mix is if it is actually good and not boring. The band’s genre is wrong, it should definitely be melodeath. Of all the bands one could copy they chose As I Lay Dying, they are not a bad metalcore band but surely they could have copied a band that is good. Not bad is not an exception I want good. Avoid can be a decent band, I do not see them being a good band, the band needs a lot of practice; but I will not write them off yet.