Anterrabae

How many bands can be piled onto one sinking ship? That’s what I’d like to know. Every time that I finally feel like metalcore is really fading out of the public consciousness, another record like this shows up at my door. Then I go a while without hearing anything, and the process repeats itself yet again. I suppose if that’s good for anything, it’s the fact that the slimming of the amount of bands playing this style is increasing the caliber of those that are sticking with it.

So by all means, give Anterrabae credit -- they’re alright at what they do. Of course it’s far from anything related to original or spectacular, but being above the waterline of decent is a victory as far as I’m concerned. It’s nearly 2007, and the stern is almost upright, almost ready for the final plunge.

Before all that though, And Our Heart Beat in Our Fingertips, Without Reason has some things to say. And most of them aren’t new things. The melodic interludes, the spoken word, the sing/scream juxtaposition -- it’s all still here. Overused, even. But there’s some redeeming qualities in these songs that many of the bands' peers aren’t quite fortunate enough to possess. The most important of those is an absolutely ferocious lead singer.

Plain and simple, Erik Boccio single-handedly holds this record together. He takes what could be an entirely vacuous effort and gives it some true merit. As with all the other elements, his style isn’t one of originality. What it is, however, is completely and totally unrelenting. When his bandmates leave some slack in their guitar, drum, or bass playing, he’s right there to pick it up with some incredible intensity and an understanding of inflections that a lot of his peers do not. He, and the rest of the band are on full display with “Shit Happens When You Party Naked,” as this is the one instance where the entire band brings their A-game to the table, ensuring that everything from guitar, to drum, to bass, to vocals is completely on point. The mix of raging vocal delivery and guitar soloing really ignites a fire in the band, one that they unfortunately do not hold at most other points of the album.

Good aside, one of the qualities they don’t possess is a concept of brevity. At close to an hour, it’s just too much for a metalcore record, and not enough to distinguish between any of the twelve tracks on it. Taken on their own merit, many of the songs are impressive, but taken as a whole project they simply try and do too much.

Often raging, always inconsistent, Anterrabae need to work on developing a better sense of an album, rather than just working one song at a time.