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August Burns Red - Messengers

 

	RELEASED: June 19, 2007 PRODUCER: Tue Madsen & August Burns Red LABEL: Solid State Records BAND: Jake Luhrs JB Brubaker Brent Rambler Dustin Davidson Matt Greiner
+ Growth from previous work, huge production, intensity - The occasional hardcore cliché, some weak lyrics	TRACKS: 1. Truth of a Liar 2. Up Against the Ropes 3. Back Burner 4. Blinding Light 5. Composure 6. Vital Signs 7. Eleventh Hour 8. Balance 9. Black Sheep 10. American Dream 11. Redemption

OVERVIEW

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t that impressed with August Burns Red’s 2005 debut “Thrill Seeker”; granted, it was a decent effort, but the band seemed to be occupying an uncomfortable spot between Norma Jean and Between the Buried and Me.  Not technical enough to warrant the “math-metal” tag, but definitely rooted in the Botch/Coalesce school of never-play-the-same-riff-twice chaos.  Promising?  Sure, but not something I devoted a whole lot of spin time to.

            Thankfully, August Burns Red has more than upped the ante on their sophomore effort, and “Messengers” sounds much more like a band that’s spent the last couple years cutting their teeth onstage with the best in the business.  The face-smashing breakdowns on this album are absolutely huge, but the album is simultaneously more streamlined and more technically challenging stuff, all without sacrificing an ounce of the intensity and passion they showed on “Thrill Seeker”.  Pretty much every track on here is unrelentingly bone-crunching, pit-inducing technical metalcore, and (thankfully) there’s no sappy acoustic interludes or whiny clean vox to get in the way of ABR’s technical assault.  My only couple complaints with this record are basically that the band still occasionally falls for a genre cliché (i.e. speaking a verse, then screaming the same thing) and even though vocalist Jake Luhrs packs a seriously powerful set of pipes, some of these lyrics sound like they’d be more at home on the next Dashboard Confessional record.  Nothing that’s overly irritating, just the sort of thing that leaves you scratching your head every once in a while.  Still, these are minor points of contention for what is otherwise a pretty solid disc and definitely one of the better releases in the genre this year.                                                  

SONGS

“The Truth of a Liar” is a perfect example of ABR’s newfound songwriting skills, and this song does a great balancing act between hardcore fury, thrashy riffing, and huge breakdowns, and “Up Against the Ropes” is another batch of the same skull-crushing recipe.  “Back Burner” features some great lyrics in addition to what seems like dozens of punishing breakdowns, but it’s “The Blinding Light” that really steals the spotlight for my favorite track on the record – while it’s pretty reminiscent of “Back Burner”, the off-time riffing & drum work in this song coupled with some great dynamic & tempo variation works to an undeniably devastating, fist-pumping effect.  In a wise pacing move, “Composure” mixes up the formula with some slower tempos and melodic riffing almost reminiscent of labelmates As Cities Burn, “Vital Signs” blows by in a storm of blastbeats with a pensive break at about 2:05, and “The Eleventh Hour” is yet another smorgasbord of sledgehammer breakdowns and markedly improved lead playing.  Honestly, “The Balance” finds ABR’s formula wearing a bit thin, but “Black Sheep” somehow manages to take that same formula and bludgeon the listener ten times more effectively.  That leaves us with “An American Dream”, which dares to delve into some riffing highly reminiscent of older In Flames or Dark Tranquillity that builds effectively into the somber-yet-hopeful “Redemption”, and ABR’s decision to not blow their load early on slow melodic stuff pays off in spades in the emotional closer.

CONCLUSION

While August Burns Red still fall victim to a couple hardcore clichés and arguably don’t have a whole lot of variation to their sound, after a few listens it becomes pretty obvious that the boys have stepped their game up a notch and are ready to run with the genre heavyweights.  Not a perfect album by any means, but compared to most of the heavy music released this year that saw veterans either softening up or losing their touch, this record was a welcome spin in my player…when I wanted my skull bashed in.

Review by Matt Rewinski