The Way of Pain

Don’t you just love it when you find a band that is literally as generic as you can possibly get, to the point where you might as well just not listen to anything and get a more profitable result? Yeah, me neither, but nobody ever said reviewing was all fun and games. Today’s subject is Dyecrest, who, aside from having a name that sounds like something you’d use to make your teeth whiter or your dishes cleaner, were apparently the runners-up in the Young Metal Gods contest. Now, the first place band was Persuader, who I talked about already and think are pretty standard as far as Power Metal goes, and if this was the runner up, I sure as hell don’t want to see the ones who didn’t make it.

Dyecrest are Power Metal, and that is about all you can say about their sound. It’s really generic, formulaic stuff, with all of your typical trilling melodies, German-styled crunch and soaring vocals, and the only thing missing is if Piet Sielck from Iron Savior produced it and did lots of backing vocals on every track.

…fuck, he did. You know, I think they shouldn’t even have Piet come into the studio to do this anymore. I think they ought to come up with a pre-set vocal effect on music editing software that produces Piet Sielck-styled backing vocals to layer choruses with automatically, because at this rate, I don’t think there’s much of a difference. I like Piet’s voice and I enjoy most Iron Savior, but does he really have to produce everything? And add the backing vocals to boot? It’s getting really ridiculous now. It’s like every other band out of Europe has to have him, like it’s some weird street cred requirement. I wonder if they ask him to do it or if he just comes into the studio and imposes himself on these bands to the point where they let him record backing vocals just to get him to go away. That would be kind of funny, actually – “Okay, okay, Piet, you can do backing vocals on every song! Then will you please leave?”

I digress, but really, that was more interesting to think about than the music on here. The band has two modes here, fast Iron Savior/Helloween-lite speedsters and slow songs that try to be epic but just come off as…slow. I like the fast ones okay, but the slower ones get pretty painful and annoying, especially the awful “Made Me Believe” and the double whammy of the lame “Kneeling Down,” which has an intro and opening vocal section straight out of a sappy valley-girl romance movie and the excruciatingly poor “All in Vain.” This band is really bad at writing slow songs. I mean, god, didn’t someone at least think to stop them for a second in the studio and tell them that their slower-tempo songs sucked and sounded like they were just improvised on the spot? It’s positively maddening! Take that shit off, guys, this isn’t funny anymore.

Most of this stuff is something like a heavier, slightly faster Galloglass, but without the interesting parts that band sometimes had. This band’s worst shortcoming is just the songwriting, as it just plain and simple isn’t good enough. The songs are average at best and bland at worst, no real differentiation. I think the worst thing about this album as a whole is just that the band doesn’t have a real identity here, or any kind of real flow or theme to things. They’re just flinging paint at the wall, not knowing when to end their songs, when to break into a good chorus or when to elongate a good solo. Yeah, it’s kind of cute that they’re taking this so seriously, but it just doesn’t work.

I guess you can’t fault someone for trying though…oh, wait, yes I can. This sucks. It’s the most contrived, unremarkable piece of music I’ve heard in a while. Young Metal Gods? More like Young Metal Sods. If you really want to hear Power Metal, there are a hundred better bands, and if you’ve heard every one of them, I’d even just skip this. It’s a throwaway album, but at least it’s better than what the band would put together next…

Originally written for http://www.metalcrypt.com