Source: Album Artwork
Outline In Colour, hailing from Tulsa, Oklahoma in the US of A, fit very much into the We Came As Romans/Memphis May Fire style of modern metalcore – picture The Used style clean singing, with The Ghost Inside-esque screaming, the occasional blast of electronics/strings and “at least one breakdown per song or it’s basically a ballad”.
It’s not that this album is bad. It’s not really. But this style of music has always been a middle ground for alternative styles. Which means that the heavy parts are, yes, pretty heavy, but sometimes run the risk of being ruined by the saccharine high-register vocals, and vice versa.
Which in turn means that the album can feel less well done than it actually is. The sections themselves are pretty generic, and won’t be anything you haven’t heard come out of the American metalcore scene in the last few years, but it’s undeniable to say that they are done well. KC Simonsen as a clean vocalist is certainly very well accomplished at performing in a higher register, and even though most of the riffs are very simple, they’re as simple as they need to be.
Like we said, Struggle is not a bad album. The really metal crowd will probably hate it due to the overly-American vocal styles, and the constant reminders of the directions Asking Alexandria have gone down. There will, however, be plenty of the (often younger) crowd who will very much enjoy Struggle – it’s accessible by being heavy enough to not be just pop music, but the melodic sections balance out the tides of heaviness so that it doesn’t end up being a total chug-fest.
However, for those who care to take a deeper analysis of the music, the flaws become pretty apparent pretty fast. Yes, ‘Alive’ and ‘The Monster In The Mirror’ have pretty big choruses, but that’s about all they do have to distinguish them from the rest of the album. For the style of music this is, it’s passable, bordering on good – in the vast spectrum of musical innovation this is a fairly average shade of beige.
