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As Cities Burn - Son, I Loved You at Your Darkest

 

	RELEASED: June 21st, 2005 PRODUCER:Matt Goldman, Josh Scogin LABEL:Solid State Records BAND: Colin Kimbel Cody Bonnette Pascal Barone Aaron Lunsford TJ Bonnett
+ Genuine, heart-felt emotion, excellent lyrics, intensity - Hard to digest at first, unrelentingly intense,	TRACKS: 1.Thus From My Lips, By Yours, My Sin Is Purged 2. Love Jealous One, Love 3. Incomplete Is A Leech 4. Bloodsucker Pt. II 5. Terrible! How Terrible For The Great City! 6. The Widow 7. Wake Dead Man, Wake 8. Admission : Regret 9. One : Twentyseven 10. Of Want And Misery : The Nothing That Kills

OVERVIEW

 Some movies you can just watch whenever and they’re always a good time.  For me, that means popping in Spinal Tap or Dumb and Dumber or something and getting ready to predictably laugh my face sore.  Other ones you watch every once in a while, not cause they’re any less well-done, but cause they’re so raw, emotional, and intense that one viewing leaves you having watched a pretty good movie, but one that leaves you a bit moved and thinking about stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily think about.  Shawshank Redemption or Memento, anyone?

            Where’s this going?  I’ll tell ya.  On “Son, I Loved You At Your Darkest”, As Cities Burn basically pulls off the melodic, emotional hardcore version of the latter type of film.  Very reminiscent of old school Christian hardcore legends Strongarm (who basically became Further Seems Forever, for anyone who’s keeping score), ACB play a recipe that sounds like been-there-done-that emotional hardcore, but somehow manage to inject it with enough originality, passion, and genuinely raw emotion to make for one riveting listen.  The music itself is a back-and-forth between easily intelligible, but still anquished screaming, melodic clean vocals, off-time breakdowns (but not of the tough-guy moshcore variety), tranquil interludes, and everything in between.  Like the aforementioned Strongarm and former labelmates The Beloved, ACB also maintain an excellent lyrical focus, weaving stories around themes of relationships, redemption, and self-reflection that would easily find lesser bands spewing retarded emo tripe.

SONGS

“Thus From My Lips…” is a great example of just about everything ACB does right here – everything from the off-time slam-dance parts to the genuinely insightful clean vocals is here in full force, and the same can be said for “Love, Jealous One, Love”, except in spades this time.  The latter is easily one of my favorites.  “Incomplete Is a Leech” winds up being one of the spacier, more mellow cuts on here until the absolutely vicious slamfest at about 1:50, and “Bloodsucker, Pt. II” is much more of a straight-ahead rocker with some sweet arpeggio work and another one of my favorites, and “Terrible! How Terrible For the Great City!” slows things down for some slow-burn emotional catharsis.  The closest we’ll get to a ballad on this record comes in the form of “The Widow”, a genuinely emotionally wrenching tune with incredibly well-written and somewhat chilling lyrics that gradually crescendos into “Wake Dead Man, Wake”, which has to be one of the most intense, cathartic songs on the disc.  “Admission: Regret” throws down with some more sweet breakdowns & riffing, not to mention a special guest appearance from scream virtuoso Josh Scogin, and “One: Twentyseven” basically serves up more of the same.  This leaves the 6:38 closer, “Of Want and Misery: The Nothing That Kills”, which is one of the best-written songs on here and yet another instance where ACB’s writing skills allow the songs to cross from potentially horrible to instantly memorable.  Good stuff.

CONCLUSION

I’m aware that this isn’t really close to most of what we review here at S:o:R, but in a style that’s mostly known these days for girl jeans and retarded self-pity, As Cities Burn is the exception – an emotional hardcore band that’s genuine, talented, and earnest in their music, and it shows.  This might not be a record I reach for a lot, but like those movies we mentioned earlier, that’s no bad thing.

Review by Matt Rewinski

 

 

 

 

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