I have waited almost three years to write a review on this
album out of fear that I wouldn’t be able to put my thoughts into words
accurately. So I decided it’s time for me to man up and attempt to tell you
guys about this group. First off, I would like to say that on Spirit of Metal,
I was the only member that had this band on my favorite bands list until I
started telling people about them. Having discovered this album when I was
primarily listening to nu metal and alternative metal (most notably Korn, Breaking
Benjamin, Staind, Flyleaf, Godsmack, and Slipknot), there couldn’t have been a
more perfect time for this album to be released (2008). After listening to this
record almost constantly for about a year and a half, I realized that I had not
heard anything from them….at all. So I looked them up and saw that the
“anotherblackday.net” was gone like it had never been there (it was all pink
and in Chinese) and their Facebook account had been untouched for years without
any announcements or updates regarding a breakup, hiatus, or anything at all.
The commercial success of this album was minimal, with one
hit song that got a reasonable spot on the U.S. rock charts; but it didn’t stay
there for very long. I can tell because there isn’t anyone that I’ve shown this
song to that recognized it. This is extremely shocking to me (and just about
everyone I’ve introduced this band to) that they would have so little success
and would just disappear out of thin air without notice of any kind (that I
know of). So now that I’m done giving you the basic background of the Floridian
alternative metal band, Another Black Day, now comes the part of the review I’m
worried about screwing up, the music.
Where the fuck do I start?? Let’s run through a basic
overview of their sound. There’s nothing too unique about them regarding to
their sound; I didn’t have any trouble at all deciding what to categorize them.
But even though this young band decided it wasn’t time for them to stride forth
and push the limits of the genre, they still created something amazing within
the realms. The guitars are EXTREMELY crunchy, making the music sound heavy as
a truck-sized block of lead. This is evened out perfectly by sandpaper-rough
vocals that still pierce the air with lazar precision and beauty that is filled
with emotion. The drummer is amazing for a band of such little seniority and
serves as a titanium-strong backbone for the rest of the band to build on top
of.
The guitarists are amazing. The rhythm guitarist’s part is
never repetitive, boring, or overly simple which works as an amazing background
of anger and fury. The cool thing about this band is that the two guitarists
take turn during solos, and I can’t tell the difference between the two. Why is
this a good thing? It’s a good thing because it shows that the two guitarists
are perfectly in sync with each other and think as one mind by using the same
distortions, effects, styles, and complexity. This is extremely difficult to do
with any instrument and has rarely been pulled off successfully (in my
opinion), one of the most well-known examples of this is how all four of The
Beatles got all of their singing voices to sound so similar to whenever they
sing in unison, it just sounds like one person with a really powerful voice.
And besides that, both of the guitarists demonstrate astonishing creativity and
emotion all throughout the album.
Most of the songs seem to be about the struggles one
experiences in a life of drug addiction and religious confusion. This is most
apparent in the title song, Crickets, and Wicked Soul. The rest of the songs
seem to basically just be venting of sadness and anger.
The song that was my favorite off the album when I first
heard it and remains my favorite track is the title song, Another Black Day.
This is one of those songs that pull my emotions to seemingly limitless
heights. This track has literally EVERYTHING that I find attractive in music:
it’s longer than three minutes, it’s filled with emotion that is heard with
ease in all the instruments, it has mind-blowing vocal and guitar
harmonizations, it’s progressive, it’s not repetitive, it has tons of bass,
none of the instruments drown out the rest of the band, the band is tight, and
they sound like a BAND, not just a bunch of musicians. This is the definition
of musical perfection in my personal dictionary and I would believe that many
of you can at least mostly agree with that definition. That alone should have
you listening to that first track by now (if you haven’t, DO IT!).
The band shows their much heavier metal side with
ultra-crunchy guitars and double kick drumming in songs like Hallowed, Anymore,
Take Back, Crickets, Idols, and many more. Obviously all of the songs are in
the same key, which isn’t a bad thing at all as long as the music is still kept
interesting. For those of you that like the heavier alternative metal stuff,
Idols is the song for you. The guitar intro pretty much shows you right off the
bat that these guys mean business. I’ve never heard a guitar distortion with so
much crunch in that kind of music in my life, obviously these aren’t guys that
just think they’re “heavy rock with some metal”, they know they’re metal and
aren’t afraid to show it. Remember, I’m probably a bigger rock fan than you so
don’t think that I’ll like something less just because it’s not metal. The
center of all the vocalist’s anger is confined in this track by showing tense
vocals filled with frustration and hate towards our corrupted world.
The single off this album that got some air time (mainly in
Florida) is Wicked Soul. Well although I’m not surprised by the fact that they
got any air time at all, I’m puzzled why this was the song that spoke out to the
critics as being the best song instead of the first song. Then again, besides
the title track, I guess I would have to say that this is my next favorite song
off this astonishing shiny disk. Wicked Soul is the only song with acoustic
guitars and truly soft and melodic parts. The cool thing is that they perfectly
steadily build up to the explosion of distorted guitars and gravely vocals in
the chorus, but still succeed in remaining soft and ballad-like. This is
actually where the singer is at his highest point, in Wicked Soul. I guess
because vocals that are always belted out and almost yelled don’t speak out to
me as much as softer vocals with more emotion and delicacy.
Here’s something for you power metal fans: listen to the
last song and tell me what it reminds you of. Why does From the Ashes remind me
of a combination of Symphony X and Nevermore?? I guess it’s because it has the
song structure complexity and technicality of Symphony X and has the darkness
and heaviness of Nevermore spread on top of it. Regardless of whether that
sounds good to you or not, I fucking love it, and NOTHING will change that.
In conclusion, this is an album that I bought the instant I
heard it in 2008 when it was released and continues to be one of my favorite
albums of all time. There is still a lot of things that I love about this album
that remain unexplainable. I wish I could put my FULL opinion of this album
into words, but I can’t no matter how hard I try. I guess it’s one of those
things where it’s not a specific trait or thing you like about it, it’s just that
you feel a special connection to the music when you listen to it that you can’t
explain. I know that there will be tons of people that don’t get the same
connection with this band that I do, but this is still a record that you should
give a good honest try before you judge it. Lastly, if there is ANYONE who
knows ANYTHING about what happened to this band or where they are now, PLEASE
leave a comment because I need to know. I would give this a perfect score (just
in case I didn’t make it clear enough).
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