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Aiden

Rain In Hell EP

Written by: PP on 24/11/2006 22:01:18

Which band isn't more hated than Aiden? Bottled on all of their UK festival appearances so far, you gotta give props for their ridiculously emo-dressed, black mascara painted frontman Wil Francis. Coming onto the stage in front of thousands of hateful people and saying "Let's see what you got, you fucking pussies!" takes some guts, especially when you know the treatment you would receive even without provocation. Without ever hearing any of their music, I already hated them, simply because everyone who I ever met said Aiden is just about their hate band number one, which usually isn't a good sign about a band. So I went on to investigate what is so horribly wrong with this act that causes hundreds of thousands of people to despise them more than any other band out there by checking out their Halloween EP "Rain In Hell".

From what I had heard from Myspace before, Aiden writes songs that are, ironically, catchy as hell. This is also the case on "Rain In Hell EP", featuring three new songs and two covers. "A Candlelight Intro" introduces us to an AFI-style haunting atmosphere with background gang-shout inspired singing, before the main riff of "The Suffering" starts straight off of the intro track. It's impossible not to hum along to the track after a while, as it's so poppy and so emo simultaneously, but the hints of why people hate this band so much start to pop up. The song structures are about as predictable as they can get, and I bet you could find staring at a white wall more inspiring than this song. Sure, it's catchy, just like "We Sleep Forever", but hello? "Sing The Sorrow" by AFI? I know it has been said over and over again, but Aiden just can't seem to get over their similarity to AFI, and they aren't anywhere as good as them, so why bother at all? "White Wedding" is the point where the songs change from being plain uninspiring to annoying, with Wil singing with a wannabe low voice "Hey little sister.." making me want to kill him for raping the Billy Idol song. "Die Die My Darling" is a modern rendition of the old Misfits song, but Aiden just isn't the right band to do this and fail to shed some new light onto the classic.

Having listened to some of Aiden's old material on Myspace, I'm wondering where all the screams and the speed are, which made their Myspace profile songs at least moderately enjoyable. Add in an acoustic version of "Silent Eyes", and the fate of "Rain In Hell EP" is sealed. It's about as safe bet as betting on Chelsea against team Rockfreaks! Yet listening to the old material was at least slightly enjoyable because it would instill itself into your mind for a few weeks for just being so god damn catchy, but this just isn't here. Aiden are trying to be epic - without any success whatsoever. If I didn't have a reason to hate this band before, I do now: making music this uninspiring and unoriginal should be criminal.

Download: The Suffering
For the fans of: Hawthorne Heights, AFI, Bayside, From First To Last
Listen: Myspace

Release date 31.10.2006
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