minorthreat78's Full Review: The End of Heartache by Killswitch Engage
I have, at times, been known to mock the sub-genre of metal known as "metal-core". This actually has little to do with the music these bands produce; in fact, I like many of the bands within the sub-genre. It more has to do with the implications of the appelation, a convenient way for bands to say, "Hey, we're kinda emo, but we aren't really emo, cuz we use complex rhythm structures, metal guitar riffs and the occassional bit of death-metal wails. So, we're 'metal-core'."
But I digress. The point is, even if the genre itself is a little superfluous, the music produced from it can still be quite quality.
Such is the case with the band Killswitch Engage, and their 2004 album, The End of Heartache. The band, as great as they were, is moving on, unfazed, even with a new lead singer and drummer. Actually, this is even better than their previous work...and, dare I say, one of the best albums I've heard this year.
Actually, I think adding vocalist Howard Jones (no, not that one...at least, I don't think so) was a step up for the band, as his clean melodic elements add to the chaotic musical atmosphere of eccentric 2/4/2/8 rhythm change-ups and other trappings of math rock that infest into, well, pretty much any metal band nowadays.
Musically, the band is as right on as they were on their debut album, Alive or Just Breathing. Still maintaining the general In Flames-influenced formula of aggressive hardcore/metal rhythms, the band is as tight and controlled as ever, and display skills on par with the best in the more extreme of the hardcore metal bands out there. It isn't too surprising that the band is considered one of the few "breakout" bands in the metal-core scene (such as any psuedo-made up sub-genre has a scene, anyway. But I digress.)
Lyrically, the band doesn't exactly tread new ground. The songs are primarily focused on the all-too-familiar themes of heartbreak and loss, the nihilistic tendencies of the party wounded, and general sense of outrage and pain (someone said to me recently that if nu-metal was all about guys being mad at their daddies, metal-core is about being mad at their girlfriends for being mad at them since they spent so much time being mad at their daddies. Oddly enough, this makes sense.) You don't really have to look too hard to figure out this is the central theme of the album: just look at the song titles. "A Bid Farewell", "When Darkness Falls", "Rose of Sharyn", "Wasted Sacrifice"...the song titles read like imitation Sylvia Plath poems.
What makes the album fail to fall into the all-too-familiar contrivance of metal-core (that being where the music is aggressive and brutal, and the vocals whiny and inane) are three things that make The End of Heartache a notch above, for instance, the average Poison the Well album: a) vocalist Jones manages to avoid the nasal whine while still offering a melodic vocal treatment during the less-hardcore moments, b) the lyrics mix just enough anger with the self-loathing to make the songs more hardcore-sounding, and c) Jones' vocals actually sync-up with the rhythm section. One would think c) would be a given, but some of the sillier efforts I've heard in the metal-core vein don't even manage that much.
Truthfully, the biggest negative I can give to this album is how relatively little they do to expand beyond the already solid formula from their first album. While some efforts on slower, more atmospheric songs like "Rose of Sharyn" are here (thankfully, not moving into power-ballad territory, but at least a little less balls-to-the-walls than supremo-death-core bands), most of the album is composed of songs like "A Bid Farewell", "World Ablaze", and the title track, all of which follow established formulae for the band. While the band always maintains their technical proficiency, they mostly stick to what worked before.
This isn't really a bad thing; on the contrary, the album is easily as good as Alive or Just Breathing. It just isn't really that different. Logically, I suppose it follows from that, that if you liked the first album, you'll probably like this one, too. Its a worthwhile purchase for fans of the band, and fans of metal-core in general (or pretty much any "extreme" metal, I suppose).
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