The Inside Pulse:
Sarasota, Florida’s Burden of a Day are heir to the throne of “screamo/metalcore” band of the minute. The over-exposure of this genre, regardless of what Alternative Press and Fuse TV try and tell you, has burnt out the market and clones like this band have been popping up and cluttering the desks of many a reviewer.
Burden of a Day’s influences run the gamut, with artists like the Smiths and Green Day mentioned alongside Thrice and Underoath on their personal Myspace sites.
Once this style is dead and buried, I am pretty sure that no one will care. The long and shaggy, diagonal bangs will be snipped after college graduation into some appropriate “professional” cut, and the fans of these bands will spend decades trying to hide the neon star tattoo on their wrist. This is “peer-pressure music” at it’s best: you heard it was cool from a friend or you like a girl that enjoys this style, so you actually think it’s cool before you have a chance to listen to it. Don’t bother adding this to your collection, as there truly is no wing in the Hall of Fame for “Music We WISHED Hadn’t Happened,” but friends will snoop through your CD collection after college and you WILL have to answer for this one.
Positives:
Christians have been making music for a long time. DC Talk conned millions of us into buying Jesus Freak with their Nirvana-esque video and subsequent marketing campaign. The idea of “spreading the Gospel” by appealing to what’s hot in music at the moment is a time honored tradition and the band might be trying to bring people to God through Jesus Christ. One can’t be too sure, though. There are only two or three songs worth listening to discover the meaning, but once your eardrum splits, one should have no interest in discovering the their objective.
Ironically, the band knows what they are doing. They do what they like and have no aspirations to be signed to a “major” label. That’s truly admirable at a time when Top 40 radio is cluttered with crappy hip-hop and poorly crafted pop music that people are paying to get into rotation, only the indie labels will touch this stuff. They don’t have to give big advances for the rights to the albums, the people who enjoy the screaming will buy it, and if the company only sells 10-20,000 units, everyone wins.
The guitarist and the rhythm section are actually fun to listen to and seem very competent in various styles. They aptly maneuver between power punk riffs and slapping metal rhythms with ease, even tossing in the occasional homage to hair metal.
If I could find a single reason to replay this album, I would put it here, but I can’t. The music is fairly well-written, but the inability of the vocalist to decide when it is an appropriate time to scream like he’s auditioning for the local Linkin Park/Thursday cover band, and not discerning when he should actually “sing,” make this a major “pass.”
Negatives:
Judeo-Screamo is the new black.
If you are singing for Jesus, sing for Jesus. Even the big guy upstairs couldn’t decipher this drivel, and he spoke Aramaic.
Lyric : definition (as it pertains to Music) :
Having a singing voice of light volume and modest range.
(credit: Reference.com)
It’s time for people to take note. Don’t call yourself a lead singer or vocalist if you can’t find the correct pitch and when all else fails, you shred your vocal chords in the name of whatever-it-is you consider “music.” Just because everyone else tells you this is “heavy,” does not mean it is.
It’s just a serious drag that I couldn’t get an advance copy without the vocals. Had I wanted to hear the mating call of the Eastern Screech-Owl, I could have gone to the Bronx Zoo.
Holy crap, I didn’t buy this album and I want my money back.
Cross-breed:
Avenged Sevenfold with J.T. Woodruff or Geoff Rickley taking turns singing…an ear-splitting garbage-fest.
Reason to buy:
If you enjoy not being able to discern 7/8s of the words on an album, this might be for you. If as a child, people dared you to spend the night in the haunted house in your neighborhood, and not only were you able to sleep through the evening comfortably, you awoke well-rested and are looking for another scary challenge.
