Love and Other Disasters

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