More Than A Thousand

Vol 5: Lost At Home

Written by: PP on 23/03/2014 16:27:44

The wave of melodic hardcore bands we've been experiencing in recent years also counts among its rank More Than A Thousand, who have been one of the leading representatives of the genre in their home country Portugal for many years now. "Vol 5: Lost At Home" is their latest album, and like many of their contemporaries you can pretty much expect lingering guitar melodies delivered over crunchy, powerful rhythm section and of course decipherable, thick growls giving contrast to the many clean choruses on the record.

They are aptly comparable to bands like Counterparts, The Ghost Inside, and Hundredth, with the main difference being the growls are somewhat more throaty in their nature, and clean vocals are in a much larger role in general. Most songs fall squarely in the melodic hardcore genre definition with huge guitars and crystal clear production giving the songs an epic feel, but it is the aforementioned clean vocals that set More Than A Thousand apart from the masses. These often reach towards the emo/post-hardcore territory, but are less whiny and always infectiously catchy when they arrive. For instance, "Lost At Home" has a chorus to kill for, and the "you will slowly choke on poison, you will drown in your words" passages of "Songs Of Death" have been haunting me for a couple of weeks now. In terms of guitars, the riffs aren't as distinguished as material on The Ghost Inside records, but they aren't hardcore/beatdown oriented either, avoiding the chug-chug feel that many other bands trap themselves into with a constant barrage of simplified breakdowns. Those exist here, too, but the vast majority of guitars are dynamic and riff-based instead.

For some weird reason the band includes electronics on a couple of tracks in a backing role, most notably on "Feed The Caskets" where crazy dubstep drops surprise after four straight up melodic hardcore songs prior to it giving no indication of this. It's not the way to go forward and hopefully the band realizes this as well.

At fourteen tracks, "Lost At Home" feels slightly long. Cutting a few songs out certainly wouldn't hurt as it would put more focus on the highlight tracks already mentioned in this review. But these are largely consistent at delivering a thick, impressive melodic hardcore expression that has plenty of anthemic choruses to scream along to at live shows to come.

Download: Lost At Home, Feed The Caskets, Song Of Death
For the fans of: Counterparts, Hundredth, Landscapes, The Ghost Inside
Listen: Facebook

Release date 18.02.2014
Good Fight / eOne Music

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