Review Summary: With Life in Mind provide a slightly distorted look into who they really are with their debut Grievances.
Hello, my name is UO910, and I have been a fan of heavy, unrelenting metalcore for years. I do know and understand that this description encompasses many undesirable bands whose musical competence is less-than-stellar, but I do also know and understand that when done correctly, it can be an extremely rewarding and enjoyable listen. Unfortunately, there is an unbelievably fine line between the former and the latter. Yet another Pennsylvanian metalcore group, With Life in Mind fall on both sides of this line with their debut full-length entitled
Grievances.
The album opens with its title track, which is chaotic a minute-and-a-half interlude of sorts with some screams and heavy riffs. The first real track on the album, "King of Frauds" immediately lets the listener know what the next 40 or so minutes will be like. It establishes
Grievances as a very fast and punishing record. A few things are quite apparent after hearing this and the next song, "The Collapse of Men": vocalist Justin Kraus has range only visible with a microscope and WLIM's songs are going to be over-saturated with breakdowns and therefore will do very little to differentiate themselves from each other.
Although Kraus’ range is painfully diminutive, he does a good job within it. He is a strong screamer; if he could develop range I certainly think he could be a great screamer, but as it stands now he is extremely average. WLIM don’t use breakdowns to a ridiculous extent like some bands do, but they still use them a lot. They also use pretty much the same song structure in most songs, rarely branching out into good bridges or using timing changes. This all causes
Grievances to become a train-wreck of similarity. Drummer Joshua Ireson is a very average metalcore drummer. His additions never extend beyond your typical china breakdowns and double bass-heavy verses. Guitarists Sean Steinmetz and Matthew Babenko and bassist Conor Hesse are all above average at their respective instruments. Steinmetz and Babenko provide pretty good riffs most of the time, and Hesse is actually audible a decent amount.
So far I have really focused on the bad of the record and I’m sure a lot of you are wondering why I gave it a three. Let me say, it does have its high points. "King of Frauds" is a pretty solid song, and probably the most popular song from the album. "The Collapse of Men" and "Surroundings" feature a couple of good breakdowns. "Plagued" is plagued (signature dry humor) by a boring first half, but rebounds nicely with some good gang vocals:
'With every odd stacked against us, we walk as men through a sea of giants.'
Grievances closes with "Our Endless Existence". Since the album started pretty strong, I expected a lot out of this song. I figured WLIM would add another solid book end to complement "King of Frauds". "Our Endless Existence" delivered, being the strongest track on the album. On paper, this song shouldn’t have been so good, but it was strangely well put-together. The main feature of the first half of the song is a pretty generic breakdown around the one minute mark. This would normally be a yawn of a breakdown, but it is flowed-into pretty seamlessly with a bone-crushing verse, and is then picked up by a surprisingly melodic verse with some gang vocals. From that point on, it is carried by robust screams and tasty guitar riffs.
Like I said above, this record falls on both sides of the fine metalcore line of judgment. "Anxiety Ridden", "The Human Condition", and (to a ridiculous degree) "Self-Righteous" all have a terrible case of filler-fever, which is pretty inexcusable considering how short this record is. There really isn’t a redeeming quality in any of them and "Self-Righteous" is just plain bad. "Silenced" started out very powerful, and was filled with potential until an absolutely derailing breakdown (one of the worst I’ve heard) left it reeling.
Producer Carson Slovak created a really awkward atmosphere in
Grievances, I really don’t like what he did much at all. He gave the whole record that whole Joey Sturgis dirty-cause-I-want-to-be feel with (for lack of a better word) scratchy production throughout. You can’t clearly hear all the instruments by themselves like you should be able to, they are all just kinda jumbled together. Another annoying thing is the constant use of a bass drop before most breakdowns. Simply put, if Slovak had gone for cleaner production, this would have been a better record.
With
Grievances falling so heavily on both sides of the spectrum, it’s a little bit hard to sum everything up and put it into perspective. There is no doubt this album isn’t very good, but there is also no doubt that this band has good potential to make one. I debated between a 2.5 and 3 for this album for a while, considering all of its pros and cons. In the end I decided on a 3, but if Sputnik had a 2.75, this album would be its mascot. In the end, 2.75 rounds up to 3, much the same this band can round itself up to a solid metalcore act if they vary song structures, improve on their instruments (mainly Kraus and his screaming), and avoid such shoddy production. I would recommend this only to those who are fans of the metalcore genre and can look past its flaws. If you only delve into the most accessible metalcore, are new to the genre, or plain don’t like it, stay away.
Recommended Tracks:
"King of Frauds"
"Surroundings"
"Plagued"
"Our Endless Existence"
