Bitter Moments was released on April 1st, and it’s bad, but there is a sliver of hope, that this was big terrible April Fool’s joke. Seconds Alive describe themselves as technical anger, and you can see where they’re coming from, for all intents and purposes the music is technical, quick, brutal, and overall really quite impressive. The problem comes from the incredible monotone vocals that are scattered throughout, which adds the “anger” to their desired genre of choice.
Let’s take this EP, and look at it systematically for a moment. Bitter Moments is Seconds Alive’s first EP, and there are a few decent positives to take from it. As has already been stated the guitar work is really quite good, with fantastic finger work going in to keep you thinking and on your toes throughout each of the six tracks. ‘Upon Yourself’ is a prime example of when a mediocre track really kicks itself into life, with the use of some impressive technical finger work, and overall decent music. ‘Drawing the Line’ takes use of some more melodic vocals to break things up a bit, and realistically they’re the best vocals on show here.
We don’t like to dwell on negatives for too long, but when something like the unclean vocals seems to make an entire track collapse in on itself, it’s worth noting. There’s nothing wrong with having unclean vocals in these tracks, they would work perfectly within the context of the tracks themselves. The problem is in their execution. It feels like they’re just thrown out without any due care or attention as to how they fit into the rest of the track. Most importantly though, they sound forced, and painful, which will not help vocalist Robbie Doran at all. You can see where they’re coming from, but with a little bit of variation in the screams, and making them less forced, we’d see a completely different outcome.
There are certainly a number of positives to take away from Bitter Moments, the different tracks are really quite good, giving enough variation and notable differences to make them interesting. Each track is also set out quite nicely, if not often times finishing rather abruptly. We can certainly see some people enjoying this EP, but that number won’t really make any notable milestones.
