Soundtrack of a Dying Town

Upon first listening to this cd a couple years ago, I was blown away. It was amazing, powerful, and you could quite frankly mosh like a bastard to this music. Faded Embrace had me impressed.

Since then, my musical taste has matured significantly, and the vast majority of breakdown-laden music tends to leave me shaking my head in dismay. So many (possibly) good bands ruin their music by relying on breadowns and cheapening their music. Think about it: how much easier is it to write a "good" breakdown and rely on that than to write a couple good riffs to fill the same amount of space?

That said, upon a more recent listen, it hit me that Faded Embrace falls into the category of "breakdown laden music," somewhere between hardcore and metalcore of some sorts. As annoying as their constant breakdowns are, though, some of them are well orchestrated, and I'm going to leave it at that.

What saves this music for me is the actual riffs themselves. Throughout the five-song ep, Faded uses numerous riffs that could very well have come from guitarists of a professional grade, and not guitarists out on their first crack at an album. They grab you and force you to listen on, much like the opening riff of "Our Time" (possibly the best of the album). The riffs also largely flow through the entire song, through the breakdowns, and any other breaks in the music. This is a huge plus, which means that the "chug-a-chug" parts don't really feel forced, and the rest of the music builds off of these breaks. Truth be told, if there was more riff and less breakdown, this band could justifiably be called a pure melodic death metal band, and drop the dreaded core label.

The drumming is very good, but maybe a bit limited in complexity. There is a lot of fast double-kick drum and crashing symbols, but no distinguishable tom use or switching up of symbols. This leaves the drummer in a pretty core light, with the majority of the rhythms being the generic double-kick, crash symbol, and snare on every other beat drumming. This is good in moderation, but I believe it would be better had there been some more mixing up of the rhythms and hits.

The bass is the usual bass, except a tad bit better than normal. You can hear it pretty clearly on much of the music, and in some places (such as "Our Time" again) it even takes a harmonic jump and stands out. I'm not one that believes the bass should simply be relegated to background noise, so this is a welcome occurance.

The vocals are a mixed bag for me. They certainly fit the aggressive core style of the music, so no knocks for sound. There are even some places where the range is demonstrated, which is a must if a vocalist can be labeled as skilled instead of a one trick dog. The downside is, again, that they so often fall into that standard "bark with the breakdown," and there are marks off for that. It is wholly possible to take the rhythm of the breakdown and work around it, complimenting it with a different rhythm, and making it, well, better. The vocalist does do this on occaision, notably the section of "Fight" where he claims that "the feeling welling up inside is like a fucking bomb." The only other knock I have for the vocals (which may or may not be his fault) are the lyrics. They are very generic sounding, not so thought provoking, and generally very short and repeated. If you have the music as a background, and have intelligible vocals, originality is certainly encouraged, because otherwise you're left with a "ho-hum" feeling after hearing the message.

Overall, this is a tight sounding album, with excellent production for a first time out band. The music sounds proffessional-grade, and you never get the feeling of this just being a "garage band." However, the dumbing down of the music with breakdown after breakdown hurts the overall quality, despite some impressiveness elsewhere.

Verdict: Worth a listen, hope for more improved products in the future.

Stand-out tracks: Our Time & Anarchy Tonight