About two thirds through album highlight “To The Dreamer” off Save The Clock Tower‘s new Wasteland album is a lyric that says “we find in time, there’s no one else to blame, we are the ones holding ourselves back”. Unfortunately, the lyric rings all too true for this album. How many more duh-dun-duh-dunananananana-dunh-dun-dun riffs do bands need to churn out. There is virtually no edge to metal core as a genre anymore. It takes serious sifting for a diamond in the rough and this is not it. Flat drum sounds and washed out guitar tones with nasal and flat melodic vocals, the occasional semi-interesting falsetto that goes nowhere unfortunately and, worst of all, screaming vocals that are interchangeable with dozens if not hundreds of similar bands.
“Sanctuary” is the epitome of everything wrong with this album, so of course it is the lead single. I hate being a dick, but this does not stand out. There are some cool moments like what sounds like a toy piano at the end and some sheets of melodic and ambient guitar that are cool, but try listening to the djent regurgitation of “The Beautiful Lie” and not feel like the lie is that this is original at all. I love This or the apocalypse, who this band sound somewhat like at times, but the difference is those guys throw in a lot more twists and turns and write political lyrics with a ton more bite. If I saw this band live I could nod my head, but I’ve been listening to old school shit like Dagnasty, Fugazi and Big Black lately and this new school “underground” just does not have the same chance to seriously change things. Bands are just too fucking complacent. The scene is a Wasteland because bands fucking copy one another! I want to hear Amen Ra or the actually urgent punk of Pissed Jeans take over the world, not this carbon sound that has been recycling around the last ten years.
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