Four Letter Lie

Let Your Body Take Over (2006)

Jordan Rogowski

I've got some four-letter lies for you:

Good.
Fair.
Okay.

Any of those distinctions would be completely blasphemous when used in conjunction with Let Your Body Take Over, an album so chock full of five-year-old clichés and tired themes that I'm surprised Jay Leno hasn't integrated it to his late night stand-up.

Metalcore, pure and simple, you'll find the same breakdowns and sung vocals as Underoath was doing, and doing better, six years ago. By the standard of what the genre is in 2008, they're par for the course, at worst a two over. By the standard of music as a whole, they're still riding a train that most bands with good sense jumped off during Bush's first term in office. The sing/scream dynamic so over-used in the genre is more pronounced on Let Your Body Take Over than with most; if you catch certain songs at a certain time you'd never even know it was metalcore at all.

"Feel Like Fame" is more Fall Out Boy than Underoath, right down to vocalist Brian Nagan sounding scarily similar to Patrick Stump, right down to his intonation during the higher notes of the song. What would be a solid pop-rock track is thrown into gimmick territory when the heavy guitars and screamed vocals enter the fray for about four seconds. It happens on three separate occasions, each of those occasions killing any momentum the melody had set.

With song titles like "Baby, You're My Bad Habit," you essentially know what's coming down the pike, and this is no exception. The dichotomy between the completely average sounding screamed vocals and the melodic singing leans towards the former, and it's unfortunate. The sung vocals are pristine and tactful, and are the only aspect of the music that keeps the record from being completely forgettable. When Nagan is singing, the tone of the guitars perfectly suits him and so does the pace of his bandmates -- too bad that it's all for nothing as soon as the badly-timed screaming ruins another of what could have been a solid track.

Just listen to Underoath.