Review Summary: It's like Killswitch Engage only less obviously trying to rip off the Death By Stereo vocalist. If that sounds appealing, go ahead and give it a listen.
While I wasn't one of the few anxiously waiting for Bury Your Dead's newest release:
It's Nothing Personal, I had happened to stumble upon it earlier, and decided to check it out to see if the group had managed to pull themselves out of the rut their previous release put them in. The short answer: not even a little bit.
The first track off the album,
Hurting Not Helping, starts off with a very poor attempt at sounding 'brutal', heavy blast beats (Mark Castillo), chugging guitars (Brendan MacDonald, Chris Towning), almost machine-like bass (Aaron "Bubble" Patrick), and a very noticeable melody on top of it all. Not even 1 minute in, we're greeted by Myke Terry singing away, further solidifying the group's position in the 'MTV2 metal' genre.
Without You sounds almost exactly the same as the first track up until the vocals start, where we're yet again given the displeasure of listening to Terry try to put out beautiful vocals while accompanied by painfully repetitive chugging and beats. Now, his vocals aren't awful by any stretch of the imagination, they're just.. not good. Trying to go from a ballad like sing, to a metal scream, to a metalcore growl, and straight back to another attempt at singing just doesn't work as well as they're trying to make it. If the members of the band tried to vary up their instrument work even a little bit, it might be better, but every song seems to be a 3 or 4 minute blast of the exact same thing with slightly varying vocals.
Broken Body offers about 10 seconds of relief with the drums starting out before everything else, but right as you hit the ten second mark, everyone else joins in and repeats the exact same fifteen seconds for the rest of the song. Terry's clean singing does sound a bit better in this song that the previous two attempts, but before you really get a chance to appreciate it, he throws you back into his 'brutal growls'
"Sorrow has become my only friend again
I know, I will fail you in the end"
These are the only two lines he sings, and repeats them about 3 times throughout the song. This really leaves you wishing he would stop trying to mix screaming, growling, and singing and just focus on one. As the album went on, despite getting more melodic, every song still manages to be every member repeating the same fifteen seconds of songwriting throughout every track, never letting up until a 'breakdown', if you can call it that starts up, or another ballad-like chorus comes around.
The album continued like this for a few more tracks, only to be followed by
Swan Song. I'm not sure why the beginning of this one stood out so much, but for some reason, I wasn't forcing myself to pay attention to this one as much as I had to with every other second of every other track. Maybe it was the fact that his singing stood out more here than the rest of the album up to this point, maybe it was because the guitar wasn't mindless chugging again, I'm not sure, but something about this track stood out. But just to avoid making anyone think they actually have potential or a desire to better themselves musically, the breakdowns start, and the ear raping growling attempts came into audibility.
Lion's Den, and
Legacy of Ashes continue with a slowing down of the failed attempts at brutality, and close the album with
Closed Eyes and
Enough. Closed Eyes, an almost 5 minute mix of doom, post, and even sludge metal gets followed up by a 1 minute long track featuring nothing but the piano that seems to have been added on because the outfit didn't think their album was mainstream accessible enough already.
Overall,
It's Nothing Personal brings nothing new to the table, does nothing to stand out from the other metalcore clones, and will probably only appeal to the MTV2 crowd, and the easily pleased.
