August Burns Red (again)
There always seems to be considerable controversy when bands -especially metal ones- try new things. For August Burns Red‘s latest album ‘Rescue & Restore’ the predominant side is ambiguous. The band has stuck with a cleanly mixed sound, similar to the predecessor album “Leveller” which takes away some of the bite that their album “Messengers” had a lot of. Yet ABR has continuously evolved while retaining its roaring pulse: crushing, odd-meter riffs and heavy breakdowns maintain their place in the band’s signature style. This doesn’t mean that they’ve adopted new things, however. The use of violins, cellos and trumpets is not a common thing within the metalcore genre, and the album shows why: it doesn’t work – the instruments sound alien in an otherwise mostly heavy and vicious sound environment. Even in the softer part of ‘Creative Captivity,’ the strings sound out of place, but at least they don’t sound as discordant as the trumpet – which sounds like a MIDI (i.e. computerised) track, crowbarred in at the last minute as an incongruous alternative to (shock, horror) a guitar solo. Luckily these instruments are sparsely used but the album would be much better off without them.
Luhrs and Davidson go hand in hand as lead and backing vocalists respectively (but only when they’re screaming, not shouting) and once again deliver a superb performance. Although the spoken prose on the album sounds a little pretentious (including the overused radio-EQ and different reverbs) it doesn’t really have any negative impact. The entire band is tight and clearly talented with more skilful musicianship evident thanks to the musical complicatedness of each song. Nonetheless, the tracks are messy and similar – nothing really stands out. Songs such as ‘Creative Captivity’ rely too much on layering on top of a repetitive tune. Drum wise, every track is virtually a solo that doesn’t sit comfortably with the rest of the music (although it still powerfully drives each track, even if is somewhat unnecessarily chaotic).
Overall, the band have kept their style but used some unfitting, new sounds that seem forced, and have sacrificed unique songs for unneeded complication and messy disorganisation filled with erratic arbitrariness that employs the occasional recycled tune. Long-time fans will no doubt find everything there is to love about this album, overlooking and possibly even enjoying the oddities, whilst others might find the pandemonium a bit too capricious.