Review Summary: Angry and melodic, 'Liars' is a debut that features a little something for everyone to enjoy.
Everybody has a little bit of anger built up on the inside. Whether you choose to show it or hide it deep inside, just waiting for it to boil over and burn everything around it, we all have it somewhere. Hardcore is the angry mans soundtrack, doesn’t matter if your pissed off at the wife, your backstabbing best friend or the American economy. Changing over the years, very few bands deserve to call themselves hardcore anymore, genres are practically indistinguishable and all the good old beat down hardcore style bands of the past have disappeared through the madness that is now the music industry. One of the most pleasing things to me is finding a band that can bring back that old feeling, while mixing in slightly new styles and ideas and making it fresh.
The Italian five-piece If I Die Today are one of those bands you can’t exactly place in one genre, since they use so many to influence their overall sound. The melodic hardcore/punk style of their music pretty much explains what they’re going for, but we also have catchy singing sections that never feel out of place, but add more diversity to the groups sound. Right from the start of this album, the energy catches you and keeps you locked down throughout the length of the album. Opening track, ‘Ships in the Wood’ starts with a very melodic guitar riff backed by fast drums and the complex mix of shouting and screamed vocals courtesy of the bands wide range of vocal talents. Using three members of the band to separate their vocals, we get tastes of singing, screaming and shouting, each used sparingly for different moments of the songs.
All three contributing vocalist members do an amazing job together, adding some very impressive vocal through the entire album. Most tracks on the record do an excellent job at being energetic, as the album never features a moment of slowing down, it gets kind of hard at times to separate the songs because of the similar sound throughout. Each and every song does feature it’s little prized moments though, and the best of those moments come with the melodic and utterly catchy style of the sung choruses on some of the tracks. ‘Poison’ opens with the songs chorus, which is extremely easy to sing along with and fun to listen too. The rest of the song keeps up the singing style, making for a softer experience that doesn’t completely ruin the rest of the albums energetic style. Working with a pretty familiar style, ‘The First Storm’ features an awesomely catchy chorus backed with it’s furious punk influenced verses, all coming together for an amazing track.
Ending with the album with an instrumental feels like a bit of a mood ruiner, but it all comes together well and doesn’t feel too much out of place. ‘Liars’ is a furious album, but doesn’t just leave itself bent on it’s anger, opening up at times with those softer choruses and such, the album features something for everyone without seeming to try too hard. If I Die Today can sure go somewhere with themselves, if they keep on doing everything they can to feel as original and fun as their debut, we will surely see them at a much larger scale in the future.
