Crucify.Kill.Rot.

Rose Funeral is not a band I consider to be essential listening in the deathcore genre. Sure, they improved quite a bit after this album but I don't often go out of my way to listen to their music. Actually, until a few weeks ago, I hadn't given their debut album "Crucify.Kill.Rot." a full listen. I'm not sure what possessed me to go back and listen to their independent debut full-length but now that I have, I can definitely say this is their most forgettable release. Deathcore is not a genre known for a lot of innovation outside of some of the more technical or progressive bands. Rose Funeral sticks to a strict, by the numbers deathcore sound and here, it's just generic and average. Thankfully, it's not horrible or offensive.

The guitars are standard here. There are no solos anywhere on this album aside from a few obligatory leads and even these are fairly uncommon. Thankfully, in terms of production value, the guitars actually sound okay. They are not what drags this album's score into the 50s for me. No, though they certainly do nothing to really better the album's musical direction. A few melodic riffs here and there are nice to hear amidst the repetitive breakdowns. The melodic riffs sound like they were ripped right out of the modern melodic death metal handbook. There are some nice clean sections in the two instrumental numbers "Intereo Diu" and "Dawning the Resurrection" but these are exceptions. To my ears, the latter half of the album contains the best songs. "The Well" and "State of Decay" as well as those two instrumentals have the coolest guitar sections and some decent riffs. They sound far better than the first half of the record which is just forgettable for me, though really, even these better songs aren't all that amazing. The vocals provided by Destin Armstrong are also just standard death metal/hardcore vocals that do little more than move the music along.

So, what is my biggest issue with "Crucify.Kill.Rot"? The drums. It's not that the drums are played poorly because they are always in sync with the riffs and breakdowns, and there are some nice blast beats here and there. My issue is the production. Oh man, is it bad. The snare has to be one of the worst sounding snares I've heard in a long time. Everything else sounds fine. It's just that stupid snare! It sounds like someone hitting ruler on a styrofoam cup or something. This is a huge distraction for me and if they could have just made sure the snare didn't sound like someone was repetitively hitting their toothbrush on a piece of printer paper, it wouldn't have been nearly as much of a chore to listen to. Even the album's short 33-minute duration sounds almost like 45 minutes JUST BECAUSE of that snare! I'm not sure if Ryan Gardner was actually playing real drums or using a drum machine because it sounds way closer to the sound a poorly mixed drum machine track would make. Either way, it's pretty laughable.

Generic deathcore is not as offensive to me as it is to some other people. I mean, I do enjoy deathcore enough to listen to this album and find some stuff to enjoy in it even if the drums sound like AIDS. Thankfully they did improve their style on following releases. It just goes to show how poorly executed production on one instrument, combined with a fairly textbook writing style of the music can drag an album down quite a bit.

I listened to this album thinking I might have gotten some good unique Deathcore into it, and I did. But then I realized how bad and pathetically played this album really is. Everything that is played here is very generic, they play the same time signature every time, same old thing over and over again. Nothing interesting.

If you were to listen and possibly learn all the guitar parts to every song off the album, you'd realize they are all the exact same hing but with different off beats, very generic, very simple, just short quick blasts of guitar strumming on 1-3 notes. Very rarely did they ever play a guitar sweep, change multiple notes or even play a decent solo. Then again, I don't think there WERE any solos.

Another aspect that pissed me off is the drums. The snare sounded like shit, very high and not metal at all, the double bass just followed along with the blast beats, which brings to the next point, the drums should have shown more talent than just playing blast beats. I have nothing wrong with blast beats in metal, it sounds good for driving parts, but seriously, it takes no musical talent to play, gets very repetitive and shows no talent whatsoever if it's the only thing that you're playing. And finally, I believe it was a fucking drum machine the whole time, you need to get a goddamn machine to play talentless blast beats for that long? That's pretty pathetic in my opinion.

The vocals were also, very generic. Deathcore screams mixed with low growls, but both sound like crap and don't sound melodic at all, when this is SUPPOSED to be Melodic style Deathcore. Bullshit. The vocalist never knows how to shut it either, whenever there's a silent part of the song, he needs to be in there even when it would have sounded better without the vocals. For example, the intro to their song 'The Well' sounded very nice slow melodic finger tapping, and was a cool intro at first, but the vocals had to come in, kill the mood, and just bring it down. Sounds bad, and let your band do something good, man.

And finally, the bass. No interest at all, you can barely hear it, and it just plays with the guitar, nothing unique being played by it, nothing special, just low notes that you can't hear cause the guitar's in the way. If they had a bass intro, or riff or even just bring the volume up and playing some different notes, it would sound better. But no, had to be, yet again, very generic.

In the end, you may listen to this and think it sounds good, but when you actually get into detail, you find out how shallow & crappy it really is, and how little talent and creativity the musicians in this band have. Buy it for the music, hate it for the lack of true musicianship.

-Bloodyhavok.

It seems Rose Funeral followed the formula for the most dull melodic deathcore ever. I'll start off by saying that I'm a sucker for anything melodic, so I started listening to this album in search of some kick ass and unique melodies. I definitely looked in the wrong place... While the melodic aspect of this album can be entertaining and pleasing to the ear; Rose Funeral rapes the shit out of breakdowns and makes you want to punch their future babies. The worse part is that the breakdowns aren't even rhythmically interesting; they are simply annoying.

Production-wise the guitars are way to dominate and drums sound weak. The snare drum is probably the most annoying thing (particularly the really fast gravity roles)... it sounds like this guy is hitting the snare with pencils. I can hear the bass, which is always is always a plus for me, but it's really nothing special. The bassist simply follows along with the guitar riffs. The drums are also pretty damn generic. No variety to be found here, just your basic metal beats and fills. On the bright side: Rose Funeral are pretty rhythmically solid. On the downside: they aren't playing anything extremely complicated so they have no excuse not to be... At least the guitars have decent tone...

The vocalist isn't the greatest... he uses low growls and high growls. They're not bad, just not great either, and you can make out what he's saying if you listen closely. Unfortunately the lyrics are bad. The guitar riffs range from average to a little below average. They can be fun to listen to sometimes, but they aren't unique in any way. All in all, Rose Funeral don't really have any astounding qualities that separate them from the typical melodic metalcore\deathcore band.