Shadow Hearts

Deutsche metalcore. Their earlier records (A Small Boy and a Grey Heaven and Vent) took more of a hardcore-meets-Slayer approach, but this one features (confusingly enough) both more melodic singing and less melody. The screaming vocals are better than ever, or maybe it just sounds that way in comparison…. Mike hears a nu-metal tendency in their chugga-chugga riffs, and combined with the singing, it seems like an unfortunate run at… I dunno, selling out. (Maybe I just think that because Vent contains one of my favorite songs ever and this is just not living up to their illustrious past.) The best songs are the ones that sound exactly like parts of the last records recombined, cos the new elements just aren’t working. Aw.

1. some introductory dinking around
2. gets down to business – speedy and screaming with some decent guitar-harmony mosh-part breakdowns, and then some inadvisable singing
3. nice speedy intro, mosh parts, silly spoken breakdown
4. nice pummeling parts
5. sounds like the old stuff – careening riffs and infuriated screams – but yeah, too much nu-metal in the breakdown
6. machinegun drums and oh man please stop singing
7. Metallica-intro fingerpicking > Gothenburg harmony guitars
8. discordant intro bodes well and then that damn singing louses it all up
9. roar and circular chug, almost black-metal speedy part, Swedish guitars again
10. nice double bass, weak ass sensitive breakdown
11. Maiden intro > chugga chugga