Nodes of Ranvier - The Years to Come
Facedown
Melodic Metalcore
12 songs (40:58)
Release year: 2005
Facedown
Reviewed by Al

Having never heard this band before I had no idea what to expect so when I plugged the quintet’s latest offering, ‘The Years to Come’ into my CD player I was surprised. The surprise did not stem from hearing anything earth shatteringly good or loathsomely bad, but from the fact that what at first glance seemed to be a run of the mill metalcore band actually had an innovative trick or two up their respective sleeves. In a genre that is oft times the absolute epitome of stale it was good to hear a bit of innovation for once. This album is in essence a rather lackluster release but the few shreds of innovation keep it on the better side of average.

The US based 5 piece have been around awhile. They formed in 2000 with this being their second full length having released a split EP and self titled album previously. Consisting of two guitarists, a drummer, a bassist and of course a vocalist they play very accessible metalcore blending typical growled, aggressive vocals in a very similar vein to Raging Speedhorn with a slick riffing style dispensed in short bursts of melody. So far so Hatebreed, yet the vocals adopt a few facets that buck the trend such as some well sung clean vocals and snippets of spoken word style delivery. The clean vocals work very well and fit well, the spoken passages however grate after three or four listens and their overuse detracts massively from the music. The musicianship is generally to a good standard but there is nothing stupendous on offer here. The guitar work lacks technicality and is mostly straight out riffing which is not always a bad thing but it does leave the six string offerings lacking in variation. The production was quite impressive for an ‘underground’ release and in all everything sounds pretty polished.

The band is at their best when using their clean vocals and accessible rhythms to good effect. Take for example Glass Half Nothing. Starting out with the typical metalcore rhythm section before flowing into a soaring, cleanly sung chorus accompanied with a addictive, spiralling riff. Trying out new things doesn’t always go to plan however as Grave proves. An odd, out of place track that I’m sure in concept was meant to be a ‘tough guy’ ballad but comes out sounding like the bastard child of Staind and Nickelback doing a cover version of Mad World. It hurts and I don’t want to revisit it.. Rather bizarrely, one of the better songs comes in the form of the instrumental opening track The Renewal. It mixes a pounding, almost tribal rhythm with a haunting guitar lick and comes off sounding pretty damn good. I feel that if they stuck to this style and cleaned up the vocals they may be onto something that I won’t have forgotten three months from now. Aside from these tracks the rest of the album is rather average and on the most part forgettable. There are no particular stand outs as the massive overuse of the spoken word vocal style shenanigans brings decent songs such as The Dawning Age down somewhat. The song starts out promising with a short burst of clean vocals. This is replaced with an aggressive assault of riffage that you could find yourself enjoying if he would just stop whispering over it! One final thing I should mention is that the CD is pretty short for a full length clocking in at just over 40 minutes, not much bang for you buck. I feel I can only recommend this to real lovers or metalcore as I feel anyone else who approaches it may regret it due to boredom issues arising. It’s not an awful album by any means but it just fails to impress on any deep level.

Killing Songs :
Glass Half Nothing and The Renewal aren't bad
Al quoted 60 / 100
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There are 2 replies to this review. Last one on Sat Dec 17, 2005 11:15 pm
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