Review Summary: Victory Records, way to take another band and screw them even harder than they had themselves. Seriously, that was a great idea.
After losing a vocalist, one of two things happens. One, you find a new one and go on to continue being successful, or two, you get whatever happened here.
Broadcasting... is without a doubt, Comeback Kid's worst release to date. Since their first release,
Turn It Around, Comeback Kid has gotten exponentially worse with each release. Their debut was a great album, very few people would disagree with that.
Wake The Dead is a bit of a mixed album in that about half of the fans see it as an improvement, and the other half see it as a step down from Turn It Around. Some time after Wake The Dead was released, Scott Wade, the vocalist at the time decided to call it quits. This was a huge blow to the career of the band, and should have been the end. However when a group has an ego as big as the one these guys have, they're not going to be interested in ending their career so soon. Andrew Neufeld stepped up to the plate and took Wade's place, needless to say, he failed horribly.
Broadcasting... starts things off with
Defeated, a 3 minute long track showing just how far CBK have fallen without Scott fronting the hardcore outfit. Neufeld's vocals are mixed louder than any of the instruments for the entire album, and as a result forces us to listen to a scratchy, nasally, annoying noise that he refers to as a scream for a seemingly endless 33 minutes. Now, while the album as a whole is incredibly stale and seems like a chore to listen to for the most part, it manages to not be entirely boring by having a few occasional riffs and beats come into audibility above the jumble of noise and screeches.
Hailing On Me gives Kyle Profeta a whole 6 seconds at the beginning of the track to show off a somewhat lackluster drum solo before being tossed back into the horribly mixed mess. Even with the short solo at the beginning of the track, nothing manages to separate this from the other song that had the pleasure of being renamed 10 times and put into an album. It all follows the same verse, chorus, verse, gang vocals pattern and manages to become stale as soon as you press play.
But wait!
The Blackstone starts up with some noticeably metal inspired riffs, maybe things will start to pick up? Nope. Neufeld drags the song right back down and makes it almost impossible to listen without spacing out, or tuning it out as you focus on other things. On top of all the noise however, Profeta stands out by being the only member to not be making static or imitating a parrot with a smoking problem.
The next few tracks have Neufeld screaing with a more melodic approach than he should even think about attempting. He elongates any word that happens to be the last in the sentence, occasionally doing more for seemingly no reason. It would work had he tried to sync up the longer screams with the instruments, but apparently even singing with the same rhythm as the rest of the band members is too much of a challenge for someone like him. When
In Case Of Fire starts, you think they may finally be attempting to slow down. Wrong again, 20 seconds in and the ear bleeding begins. This may have been an attempt at a more chaotic or math inspired song, but any influences are unnoticeable over the abusive chugging and repetitive beats filling nearly every second of the song that isn't a completely out of place ballad-like guitar solo. Tracks 10 and 11 seemed to come and go without any notification. If I hadn't been staring at the time on iTunes as I was waiting for everything to finish so i could go listen to more bad music that I could actually stand, I wouldn't have noticed that In Case Of Fire had ended.
Now, unless you're a hardcore fan of Comeback Kid, and have a fangasm during every track they've ever made, passing this up is the best thing you can do for your ears. It's a chore to listen to, and not one track stands out from the others.
