I’m going to be honest: as a whole, I’m not a big fan of the
metalcore genre, but there are several amazing metalcore bands. Just to list
off a few of my favorite metalcore bands, there’s Miss May I, Threat Signal,
Mnmeic, Killswitch Engage, Structures, Oh, Sleeper, Eyes Set to Kill, and
Atreyu. Although there are others I enjoy listening too (like As I Lay Dying
and God Forbid), those are ones that are most worthy of mentioning. I’m not an
elitist in any kind of way, but I’m not too keen on the majority of the “generic”
metalcore scene. I do like some bands from this area of the genre, but 97% of
them seem to be either terrible or purely mediocre. Well, a week ago, I had one
of those “oh what the hell” moments and decided to give a few of these generic
metalcore bands that I’ve passed up for so long a listen. I’m not going to be
considering this a series, but the first one I’ll be reviewing is I the
Breather.
It seems that the generic metalcore sound has changed since
I last remember. I remember the generic metalcore sound as being not so heavy
and somewhat simple chord progressions (if any) like All that Remains, Atreyu, I
Killed the Prom Queen, and Haste the Day (all of whom I used to really like…except
for I Killed the Prom Queen…I only ever enjoyed one song by them). Now, the
generic metalcore sound seems to be MUCH heavier, much more breakdown-based,
much more Christian, and much, much simpler. Some people have gone to call
these bands “hardcore”, a term that I personally despise. But I’m not here to
rant about how the metalcore genre has evolved and transformed, I’m here to
talk about one of the newer generic metalcore bands, I the Breather.
I’ve known about them for a while, maybe four months or so.
But the thought of checking them out never crossed my mind. Now that I’ve
listened to this album dozens of times over the past week, I’ve come to the
conclusion that I the Breather is just another metalcore band, but they’re not
quite EXACTLY what I expected them to be. Before I get into the majority of the
album, which can be summed up in just a few sentences, I want to tell you about
my first experience listening to the first track on the album, because I was so
surprised that I had to restart the song before it was halfway through to make
sure I wasn’t imagining things. The first song, False Prophet, starts off with
a very soft keyboard/guitar line that I predicted would be playing in the background
for the duration of the track. Then, the vocals kicked in and the extremely
low-tuned guitars started chugging away like a bomb went off in my face. In
other words, the first 1 ¼ minutes of this song were surprisingly powerful and
epic.
I’ve been listening to these bands in anticipation to find
the diamond in the rough, and during this song, a smile formed upon my face and
I thought I had found the glimmering gem. After the intro “breakdown” I was
waiting for it to be more than just breakdowns, and it turns out that this isn’t
one of those “breakdown after breakdown” kind of bands. But after False Prophet
ends, things start taking a not-so-good direction. First of all, the vocals
aren’t really that good. The songs eventually start to drag on and become VERY
repetitive and bland, which is easy to do with an epic sound like the one False
Prophet brings. The drummer seems to be really unfocused on a lot of the
tracks, which leads to confusion on whether the band is out of time or the
drummer is falling behind. Once I finished the record, I was extremely disappointed
at how False Prophet raised the bar so high and have none of the songs even
come close to touching the bar with their fingertips.
The majority of these generic metalcore bands seem to
worship and idolize August Burns Red (which is respectable because they are
pretty damn amazing). Here’s the problem that I have with all these bands’
obsession with ABR: not only do they worship and fight to be one of the openers
on the band’s next tour, but they create an EXREMELY similar (but not nearly as
good and not nearly as technical) sound to ABR, which has led to what the world
knows as the modern metalcore blueprint. That’s right people, August Burns Red
might not be as big, but they’ve definitely become more influential than All
that Remains, Killswitch Engage, Sonic Syndicate, As I Lay Dying, and (dare I
say) Bullet for my Valentine. And I the Breather is nothing more than another
brick in the wall of the ABR-influenced generic metalcore scene.
For those of you diehard metalcore fans that aren’t TOO picky
but know a terrible band when they hear it, this album should be fairly easy to
enjoy. I would give this album 9/20 for being nowhere near being the worst
metalcore album ever, but nowhere near being something I would recommend and show
to any of my friends. If you’re SUPER curious about what False Prophet sounds
like, I think it’s a pretty fucking epic song and would at most recommend that
one song.
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