Review Thursday: Helmet and This or The Apocalypse!

This or the Apocalypse
Haunt What's Left
Good Fight Music

So This or the Apocalypse, hereby to be referred to as TOTA, put out a new album recently called Haunt What’s Left. Full disclosure, I know this band on a personal level... sort of. They’re from my hometown, I knew them before they had a couple of line up changes, and even last year at CMJ, the lead singer of the band asked when we could do another "crazy interview", so its like I’m an acquaintance. That being said, I have nothing to gain from giving a positive review of their album... Yet that’s what I’m going to do, of course with some qualifiers.

To someone who listens to hardcore, this album really won’t stand out to much. It has that "hardcore sameness" which I think we’ve all come to expect from the genre. However, as someone who has listened to this band from their first EP, this album is leaps and bounds above previous efforts.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that they’ve had two years to craft this particular album. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that they’ve now released three albums and they have a certain amount of maturity that they hope to channel into albums. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Lamb of God drummer, Chris Adler, helped produce the album. Whatever it is, the album is pretty fantastic. This album sounds well polished, and at the risk of alienating their 14 year old audience, sounds suprisingly mature.

Now, I know, just because both of the bands are from Lancaster a bunch of people are going to compare them to August Burns Red, hence forth to be known as ABR. While both of the bands are both hardcore/metalcore/"insert word here"-core, they don’t really have the same style. For this album, TOTA has actually put some melodic elements in and introduced clean vocals on some of the songs. Of course, this gets flak from hardcore fans saying they’re selling out or whatever hardcore fans say about bands, but the truth is that it makes them sound different from bands like ABR who have no clean vocals and are really sparse on melodic stuff. This seems positive to me, but that may be because I’m desperately looking for something that’s not always the same within the genre, and though clean vocals are not unique, the addition of them makes it seem like the band is evolving and could, potentially, do something that isn’t just breakdowns and screaming for thirty-five to forty-five minutes.

So, while I wait for something truly creative to come out of the hardcore family of music, I can listen to Haunt What’s Left. If nothing else, you should listen to their song "Hayseed" off the album, because... well... goddamn, it’s pretty fantastic. I’ve had it on repeat for a bunch of times while I listen to the album, and if I can’t hear anything original, at least I know that TOTA can write a damn good song that manages to be catchy, a skill which most bands within the genre either can’t or refuse to master. Keep up the good work gents, and I will expect the next album to have something that makes my head explode. Anything else and well... it’s not that I’ll be mad... just... disappointed.

Fan mail, hate mail, snail mail: gradeaexplosives@cjlo.com.

(Andrew Wieler)

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Helmet
Seeing Eye Dog
Work Song

Ever since Helmet mainman Page Hamilton's resurrection of the band in 2004 after calling it quits some years before, he's managed to release a pair of albums of so-so material that if condensed would make one stellar offering, and newest entry Seeing Eye Dog is of the same pedigree. After terrible opener "So Long", the record picks up steam with the title track and Hamilton's all about the gruff vocalizing, random bursts of clean vocals and muscly riffs that he seems to crank out with surprising speed. The first half of the record contains songs that all seem vaguely familiar yet completely new, as per the normal Helmet way. Eight tracks deep, however, and things turn back for the worst. Hamilton, for whatever reason, has decided that Helmet is the perfect vehcile for a Beatles cover, and has chosen 'And Your Bird Can Sing', which doesn't really work well in this genre of music. Terrible flashes of nu-metal acts covering rap songs come to mind, before floating away as subsequent track 'Miserable' tries to admirably pick up the pieces and go on.

(Brian Hastie)