This Alabama band has gotten a bit of a buzz. They are banging out the kind of post-djent metal core, that will be what all the kids are into at the big rock fests this year. Less extreme and more mainstream despite the coarse hard-core influence of the vocals. The good cop / bad cop exchange vocal exchange that became commonplace in the days of Myspace is this band's stock and trade. They admitted that Groove has been given more focus with their 6th album and makes the song listenable. By the second song, it is clear they are taking notes from Sleep Token and even HEALTH when it comes to the soft-hearted delivery of the melodic singing. This is not original but it is well executed.
Riffs are often cluttered with the counterpoint of mathy guitar histrionics, which I can see impressing the TikTok generation who ingests this sort of thing a few minutes at a time, but feels tedious when trying to consume an entire album of it. My common issue with this sort of thing is the clean highly processed style of production that dominates this sort of thing making it feel like the heaviness is sterilized out of it. By the time Things settle down for the power ballad "Blue Reverie". I appreciate it's a more 90s-leaning formula. When we get to "Slow Sour Bleed" there are all the right sounds brought together in the studio with none of the feeling in them that makes me take notice or demand my ear. By "Glimpse" the clean guitar melodies and vocal cooing that juxtapositions itself against the more staccato pounding is becoming a rather uniform formula. There is nothing that carries the same thundering menace of Meshuggah no matter what their guitars are tuned to.
I am not opposed to this sort of thing altogether as I was a big fan of the band Issues, so when ERRA leans more into their pop side, I think their songwriting choices are most effective as proven by "Past Life Persona" which is the strongest song yet. However, after this things revert back to the tired and true formula of pounding riffs and more hopeful vocals. There are a few grooving riffs that do connect, but the rule here is...cool riffs alone does not a good song make. They stomp at you faster on "Pale Iris" but fall into the predictable pattern with the chorus. The pop hooks of the chorus play against the song as they try too hard here. The last song falls more in the middle of the road. There is equal screamed angst and smooth pop crooning. I will round this down to a 7.5, while it's not my thing, I think the production plays against the band that is already on well-traveled territory, but six albums in they know what they do.
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