Before Their Eyes

Untouchable

Written by: BL on 11/02/2011 17:20:03

Before Their Eyes from Ohio, USA would have had all it takes to become a big post-hardcore name in the bloated current scene. Having been around before their latest album "Untouchable" with two previous outings, you'd think Before Their Eyes are already veterans here. Their self titled debut wasn't fantastic by any stretch of the imagination, but was good enough for people to take notice and have a few decent songs relying mostly on hooks instead of any breakdowns (at the time). The followup tried to take their sound a bit further with more flavoury riffs and southern grooves but also failed to really spark any kind of response from the mass majority of the fanbase. Here they are with "Untouchable" and it's a bit of a strange album to say the least.

Most of the album is so poppy, like pop-rock poppy. Sure the band had hooks and poppy melodies before, but nothing to this extent where it's trying pretty hard to be radio friendly. The fairly aggressive/generic "Hey Dude!" aside, the next few tracks starting from "Sing To Me" which admittedly is very catchy, all sound pretty recycled with each other: fairly simple rock instrumentation infused with sappy pop and emo lyrics that just seems weird as soon as songs like "Bulletproof", "Finding A Way", "Rick Vs. Nick" and "Hell Or High Water" (the latter of which has a ridiculously silly breakdown at the end) come blazing in the last portion of the album with chugging breakdown guitars and harsh screams - crossing to harder hitting metalcore territory. Sure bands like A Day To Remember have found a lot of success with the pop-hardcore combo, here it just creates a sense of complete disjointedness as barely any attempt is made to create a fluid progression. The songs do have a great albeit artificial feel to them I suppose, songs like "My Match, Your Fire" (it has some cheesy lyrics though) and "Start With Today" all benefit from the slick production especially (courtesy of Joey Sturgis) - the latter having some interesting guest vocals from Kristen Williams.

"Untouchable" just doesn't seem to feel right at the end of the day. It's like the band can't seem to decide how to sound, so they have two entirely different sounds on the album that barely sit with each other. Sure the heavy songs still have some catchish choruses, but it would have been better if at the very least, all the heavy songs bar one weren't lumped together at the end of the album for a start. It doesn't help that the heavy segments are about as generic as they come either, stuff that sounds like something you might get from the new Confide album, or for that matter any recent heavy-poppy post-hardcore band that play that stereotypical sound. It's a bit of a shame really, lead vocalist Nick Moore has a decent voice and certainly appears to have the pipes for both clean as a whistle singing and rough brutish screaming. The one thing that the album does have is that his presence manages to lift even the most generic songs on the album to have some kind of very brief replay value. That said, "Untouchable" certainly isn't untouchable, not by a long shot.

6

Download: Sing To Me, Love Is Misery, Rick Vs. Nick
For the fans of: Confide, A Day To Remember, Hawthorne Heights
Listen: Myspace

Release Date: 09.03.2010
Rise Records

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