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Review Summary: Myka, Relocate bursts onto the scene with a debut that puts enough of a new spin on the metalcore genre to make the release seem fresh. Myka, Relocate is a metalcore sextet hailing from Houston, TX made up of Michael Swank (clean vocals), John Ritter (harsh vocals), Luke Burleight (bass), Josh Peltier (guitar), Austin Dore' (guitar) and Aaron Robertson (drums). So far, what we have here is a band that sounds, on paper, as vanilla as vanilla can get: 6 members, with two guitarists, and vocalists, and a semi-abstract name. Now, normally bands of this nature get a single listen before being cast into the recycling bin but in the case of Myka, Relocate, there is a ton of potential and they deserve a chance.
The album begins with a short intro track, Revolve, and it's connected follow-up, Dead Ties, that gives you a taste of the band's sound. Myka has said themselves that they wanted to include influences from Top 40 artists and it's apparent with the non-instrumental effects. There is plenty of ambiance added through the use of synth. The use of effects added to the guitars and vocals are infrequent enough to not get too repetitive. Their use of the two vocalists is engaging and the switch between harsh and clean never feels forced. Also going along with the similarities between Top 40 artists, oh, the hooks...the hooks of these songs will be stuck in your head even if you hated every second you've listened to it; there is an incredibly addictive element at play here, which might just keep them afloat. Thankfully, the song structure, while being standard fare on nearly every track, doesn't normally rely on the harsh verses and clean choruses that seems to plague today's metalcore. The guitar work lies between the unfortunately typical chug-chug and the technical riffage of more progressive bands. The leads are subtle enough to meld perfectly with the rest of the song but complex enough to not sound like you've heard it before a million times. The drums don't have a "wow" factor, but they do include some good, well placed fills. The talent is definitely there, and hopefully that will be fleshed out in future releases. As for the bass, it isn't totally inaudible but is used only to give more depth to the rhythm guitar.
The first 3/4ths of the album flows quite well; the highlights being Useless, Doublespeak, Playing It Safe and The Answer. Strangely enough, those four songs are one after another. Two of the aforementioned tracks include guest vocals, one by Telle Smith from The Word Alive on Useless and another by Jonny Craig on Playing It Safe. You can tell they weren't tacked on solely as a way to promote the album; they are tailored to the strengths of the individual artists and yet the song can be played live without their presence and still be effective. The final 3 songs, however, leave you wanting the album to end so you can listen through the first 9 songs again. In these 3, all the things that made songs stand out earlier come up again and yet don't carry the same impact a second time around.
For a band that only had a 3 song EP under their belt before this recording, they show a lot of promise with strong vocal talent, interesting guitar work, and unobtrusive synth. This debut is full of slight tweaks on the genre without going overboard; for anyone looking for a new metalcore artist to sink their teeth into, this will satisfy all your immediate needs.
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Album Rating: 3.5
My first review! I wanted to do it on an album that probably doesn't receive a ton of traffic so if it's awful and gets deleted, nobody will notice! If it's bad, let me know how to fix it
| | | Album Rating: 3.0
Very solid review, especially for a first. Pos from me, and welcome to the site!
However, watch your usage of commas. It's a common error, but make sure you remember to use them to separate two independent clauses, such as "Useless is when the album really hits it's stride and it doesn't let up until Dry Spell, where the album starts to pump the brakes." You can put a comma after "stride" and you get two separate, although more basic, sentences. This is one example, but you don't do it too frequently.
Also comma usage in a list, like "Useless, Doublespeak, Playing It Safe and The Answer." Don't forget the comma before the final example, where you should always have that comma before "and".
One pet peeve of mine is (the remarkably common) misusage of "it's/its". You do this once that I noticed, in "The album begins with a short intro track, Revolve, and it's connected follow-up, Dead Ties". Always remember that "its", with no apostrophe, is possessive, like it is implied to be in this sentence. Remember that "it's", with the apostrophe, is the contraction of "it is".
One thing I would work on is being more descriptive. Avoid phrases like "very, very", simply because they are bland and far more vague than you may think.
Not trying to be an ass, you have a very solid review! You just have some grammatical errors you could touch up on, and bring more color and imagery to your writing in the future.
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
You're definitely not being an ass! This was exactly the kind of criticism I wanted and thank you so much for it. I'm kind of dusting off my writing abilities and my grammar mistakes and less than stellar vocabulary are evidence of that. Yeah, the it's/its thing I normally have under control, but every so often my fingers will go straight for the apostrophe! I caught a few of them during my revisions but obviously not all.
I think from now on I need to write and revise the review in one sitting, and then come back to it the next day and do a second set of revisions.
I feel like I described the album using more comparative language than imagery which is something I will change in the future.
Again, thank you so much for the feedback!
| | | Album Rating: 3.0
It's not at all a bad thing to write that way, especially when you've just started. It's just something that definitely brings one's writing to another level. Again, welcome to the site! I hope you keep writing, man. I can see you getting really good at it with time and practice.
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This is nothing new. We've heard it all before. However, it's funny, because this is one of the first metalcore acts to bind this many element together. I can clearly hear a lot of Memphis May Fire in here, but at the sam time a lot of Sleeping With Sirens. This is basiclly like a greatest hits. Digging it.
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
Pretty fun album, the slew of tracks from Useless to The Answer is fantastic
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