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| #FOR FANS OF: Hardcore/Metalcore, As I Laying Dying, Himsa, Shadows Fall |
“This room is green, I want to go back to the blue room.” I cannot get over the intro to this album. In an audio clip from the movie "Cube", the voice of an incarcerated person expresses his dissatisfaction with the color of the room he's in while banging his head against a wall. It's a metaphor for what you're going to experience in this EP. This Fall had me in stitches with such an out of the blue introduction to their awkwardly titled 'Not Even Time to Die', but I wasn't very impressed with the rest of the content in this release. The production is awful, the songs are generally bland, and though the band has a cohesive start, it's just another name on the massive metalcore dog-pile. In "The Cube", the man banging his head against the wall want to return to a room that is exactly the same as the one he's in except for the difference in color. That's more or less what you're going to hear on this release, a carbon copy band with a slightly different hue to the light they're stepping into.
This burgeoning metalcore outfit from Italy clearly takes leaves out of books of As I Lay Dying, Killswitch Engage, and Shadows Fall. Guitars bring in some melodic shredding riffs, drums bounce and even do some good filling at times, and vocals come out mainly with deeper growls than expected in metalcore. There are also chanted yells, screams, and even a clean interlude at the end of “My Beautiful Misery”. How quickly I recall, the last time, I heard this song. Playing your average metalcore sound, This Fall wears a bit too much of their influence on their sleeves as “Blind Side” works its way to becoming “Confined” by As I Lay Dying. This is a close cloning with just that one extra chromosome to keep this band locked in its padded cell. The emulation is shamelessly apparent, but there are interesting moments that show that This Fall has a handle on their cliche direction. The rising riff in “Twilight Zone” has those positive tones that get me thinking of Shadows Fall's “Of One Blood”, “The Contradiction” has some Himsa with its As I Lay Dying and a focus on breaking down the riff. This band works well together and the song arrangements are organic and understandable, but this band seems to be holding itself too close to the standards of those that came before This Fall. I'm sure this band could do good things if they tried to stand out rather than stand up to the par of such a woefully average era in metal history. With what they have so far they could take to a competent studio and end up on a sample disc of no-name bands, but they're not going to end up in the next Tony Hawk game just yet.
When you have a band name that's usually reserved for the first two words of a movie trailer, it's not a leap of the imagination to expect the experience to be much more than a transparent commercial attempt. The sad thing is that in 2015 this band came out with an EP called “What's Left Inside” that is well-produced and much better written in comparison. The past 'Fall' seemed to have something going for them, This Fall isn't very unique. This Fall is cashing in on mainstream hard rock/ metal that came out ten falls ago and even needs to work on that. (Five_Nails)
(Self - 2017)
Score: 55