Indianola has been pumping out the releases this year faster than many can even listen to them. The problem here is quantity over quality. A good amount of those records are pretty forgettable, and have done nothing to leave their stamp in either the metal or hardcore scenes. Caldwell hope to change all that with Accidental Renovation, but end up tripping on a lot of those very same holes

It’s that very same sing/scream dynamic we’ve all heard so many times, those very same breakdowns...it’s just a carbon copy of a carbon copy. Vocaist Randy Baublis has a great scream, a scream that’s got some good highs and lows, but it’s really not used in the way that it could be. Being that his screaming voice shows a lot of variation, they should really expand on that more, because his sung vocals just aren’t cutting it. There’s three different approaches to the vocals to be found on the album. The main approach is the regular screaming, which sounds pretty solid, then there’s some old-school punk-like shouting, which also sounds perfect for the music, but the sung vocals sound pretty awful. There’s no sugar coating it, no way around it, it’s unnecessary and it sounds like garbage.

Despite the fact that a decent amount of it sounds pretty unbearable, I appreciate the fact that the vocals do show some signs of life and diversity. The same cannot be said for the rest of the music.

Take one listen to “Behind the Wheel,” and you’ll see just what it is that you’re in for with the rest of the music. There’s the driving melodic parts, and heavy breakdowns, with little to be found in between. The rhythms are extremely basic, and seem to follow the same sort of pattern from song to song. They start out pretty melodically, then get harder, then the breakdown comes, back to the melody, back to the distortion, and then the second round of breakdowns come. I’ve heard worse, but this is still essentially some pretty derivative stuff, and it doesn’t seem like much time was taken to work on song structure. And I’d say even less work was put into the lyrics, as every trite, cliché line you’ve heard from Atreyu and the like can easily be found here. Somebody had their heart broken, somebody was betrayed, you get the idea.

It’s quite apparent that Caldwell will not be the flagship that Indianola so desperately needs. It’s been done better before, by Indianola’s own Across Five Aprils, a band they share an extreme likeliness too. They’re like a less talented little brother. So if you just have to hear music like this, check out AFA before you make your way far enough down the food chain to find this.