Soundtrack of a Dying Town

Any genre of heavy music, when it becomes the flavor of the year of the heavy music scene, subjects itself to the ills of fandom. In the late 80s and early 90s, thrash metal got so oversaturated that even Meliah Rage got signed to a major label. In the '90s, it was death metal that was bursting at the seems, so much so that you could not go to ANY metal gig without encountering some kid in camo shorts with a longsleeve Deicide t-shirt. Immediately after the turn of the century, it's hardcore's turn to overflow.

Faded Embrace comes from an area not known for it's heavy music scene. Because of that, maybe the area was due for an above average band to come from there. What these guys do is not anything that people will call "inspired" by any stretch, but what you can call it is "competant, all-encompassing metalcore." Take any element you want to from the post-Hatebreed/-Killswitch Engage scene, and it's here in the songwriting. There's blistering death metal runs, pit-inducing punk chugging, double-bass wallops, swede-style thrash, the epic Maiden-inspired harmony guitars, and more breakdowns than a '73 Ford Mustang. The vocals run the gamut from angry to pissed off, but this dude knows his chosen genre well and doesn't put things where they don't need to be. Clean vocals are not to be found here, and so therefore neither are choruses for the most part. The band doesn't subscribe to the verse-chorus formula and they don't need to when they can still manage to make everything work this well. If you need points of reference, i recommend this comparison...think of If Hope Dies, Heaven Shall Burn, Caliban, and As I Lay Dying having a deathmatch while Throwdown referees.

Bottom line is this...Trustkill or Victory should have a spot open, and these guys should fill it.