Too Pure To Die

Confess

Written by: PP on 12/01/2009 14:46:36

When Too Pure To Die released their debut album "Confidence & Consequence" early last year I hailed it for being (almost) the album that Atreyu should've written instead of "A Deathgrip On Yesterday". It contained everything an old school Atreyu fan wanted: slick guitar riffs spicing up the songs, aggressive in-your-face screaming and a "we don't give a fuck" attitude, as well as some hardcore influences from bands like Hatebreed thrown in for good measure. All in all, it was a decent package that predicted a great future for the new Trustkill signees, which makes it all the bigger shame that the band fails to build on their good foundation on their sophomore album "Confess".

Basically all Atreyu/metalcore influences of the debut album have been thrown aside in favour of tough-guy moshcore typical to bands like Hatebreed. This is probably a product of the latter's mastermind Jamey Jasta sitting behind the production desk, but it's most certainly a wrong decision for Too Pure To Die whose songs now drown in anonymity and faux-heaviness disguised underneath simplistic bash-bash-bash guitar work - you can forget about discovering more of the early Atreyu on this album. Ocassionally, a generic clean vocal chorus raises its head from the midst of the chunky guitars, but really, it's even a bigger testament to how bad this band has really become. Pretty much the only redeeming quality on "Confess" is its better production, but even then I preferred the slightly coarser vocals from the debut album to the grunts heard here.

It speaks volumes when after five or six listens I still can't remember a single song from the album. Even a louder warning sign comes from the notion that the entire album is one huge breakdown of the worst kind, featuring next to no variation throughout. I get it, Too Pure To Die want to separate themselves from the dying metalcore scene, but surely dumbing down your instruments and going for a genre sometimes even more hated than metalcore is not the right path to take?

4

Download: One True Thing, Gotham City
For the fans of: Hatebreed
Listen: Myspace

Release date 13.01.2009
Trustkill

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