The Beautiful New World

Arise's third album is partially better than their previous two, but it's still nothing special. Hatesphere, Carnal Forge, and even Arise themselves have done it all before. This is just gothenthrash plain and simple. This album is frustrating inparticular, as on the lead off track, Arise show some outside influence and it sounds really interesting, clean vocals, melodic backing leads, and is very catchy, but the other 10 songs are predictable gothenthrash with little in the way of branching out. There's some decent riffs and groove sections thrown in, but nothing attention grabbing.

I can't to give this album anything over a 65, the album doesn't fail, but comes close. It's a bit disconcerting to know Arise wrote one really catchy song which will probably be the single, reel people in to buying the album, and the listener getting 10 tracks of borderline gothentrash that they've heard already. Unacceptable.

Here's a warning: If you hear 'How Long Can You Pretend' somewhere, the rest of the album isn't as good.

Arise. If you have already heard either of this band's other two full lengths then you already know what this album sounds like. With this, their third full length, Arise churns out 11 solid but like-sounding songs of straightforward melodic death/thrash emphasizing groovy riffing and almost always pushing their musical aggression to its maximum potential.

Groove seems to be the name of the game for Arise. Almost every riff is jam-packed with it. The drumming helps this a lot too, usually doing a 'less is more' sort of thing to build up the anticipation, and then changing its pursuit to something faster, almost demanding that you headbang. It's a pretty ok style I suppose, but honestly this album isn't much of a change from their last two.

I actually feel bad saying this, but I guess it's time I admit it to myself that Arise really is just....plain....boring! Yes there are plenty of good riffs to make this new CD satisfying. There are even some good solos, and the rhaspy vocals are great. Maybe it's just a lack of idea's in the songwriting department that makes this band one of the many who give melodic death a bad reputation. I wish I could like this more, I had high hopes, but I guess Arise are just too damn catchy for their own good. I would have given this CD a higher mark, but I guess I was just expecting more. Too bad.