Creative hardcore
Ohio five piece Forever In Terror are a hardcore band. Normally that would put me off within thirty seconds, which I think is the average length of a hardcore song. However on this occasion there is something to keep you listening. The vocals are the usual screamcore style interchangeable with about a million other bands at the moment so what's the difference on this CD.
It's all about the music; usually a hardcore album has stupidly short songs and a blasting mess laughingly calling itself a tune as the background to a screaming frontman. As mentioned earlier this has the screaming but it also has songs of a decent length so there is time to put some structure in and some inventive playing to keep you awake.
There is definitely some good, solid and on occasion clever riffage going on here. Lots of heaviness and some widdly solos. The drummer is a solid as they come, again quite an inventive guy, all together they lift the album above the hardcore masses, and let's face it there are masses of hardcore bands out there. I may have given the impression that the singer is a bit pants but he does come up with a surprise that keeps him off my pants singer list. On track four seemingly out of nowhere is a clean vocal bridge/chorus that lifts the song several steps higher. I 'm not certain it is the singer singing this bit but if it isn't, fire the singer and get that guy to sing instead.
Production is ok but unfortunately there is something missing, the production isn't bad it's just blunted, not muffled but there is something missing that kind of, well, blunts it, I listen to everything on the same system so I know it's not me as good production shines and iffy production doesn't, on the heavier stuff this production sounds better but anything that needs a nicely sharpened cleaner sound suffers. This isn't a big problem it's just something I noticed and shouldn't put you off this if you wanted to check it out.
The album has a couple of surprises up its sleeve, it's a shame it waits until track four before it springs any of them as you could have pigeon holed them by then, if it wasn't for the better than expected musicianship I could have easily drifted off by then. I realise they could be hardcore through and through but I think if they let themselves open up that creativeness a little more they could be something quite special. Maybe with time and age they'll grow into their sound.