Atreyu– sorry, Blessthefall (it’s not that difficult Apple Music, really) are a… metalcore band? Sure, we will go with that. We say this because, for the most part, Blessthefall are a metalcore band. But recently, especially on this album, there are a few moments that are, to all intents and purposes, pop music. Clean vocals, little or no guitars, electronics & synths, clean singer Beau Bokan doing the whole song, bassist/screamer Jared Warth no where to be found; that’s pop music. Really.
The heavy bits on this album are the really stand-out moments. Not to disparage Mr. Bokan at all, but moments like the verse of opening track ‘Decayer’ and the heavy bits in ‘Looking Down From The Edge’ are absolutely stunning. Bokan’s vocals are sublime, the dude absolutely has pipes for days, but listen to ‘Keep What We Love And Burn The Rest’ and then compare it to the shockingly savage screamed bits in ‘You Wear A Crown But You’re No King’ off 2013’s Hollow Bodies. Or the opening to ‘Oathbreaker’ off this one. You can’t. They just don’t compare.
Now, we are absolutely not saying that it needs to be heavy to be enjoyable. The album as a whole is very enjoyable to listen to. ‘Decayer’ is a very good song, when the chorus storms in after the screaming verse it is very very good to listen to. But at the moment Blessthefall are falling into the category that so many metalcore bands find themselves sitting it: some of the tracks on their albums are fantastic, but others (particularly the ones where they try to break away from “just being another metalcore band”) are so middle-of-the-road you can practically hear white lines and occasional squashed fox the whole way through.
