Title:We Stich These Wounds
Artiste: Black Veil Brides
Genre: Rock
Evil Bastard: Violet
On the surface, this doesn't look too bad. I mean, I may not necessarily like the band (I don't know if I will: I've never heard them before) but torture? I expected the previous album to be torture; this I consider may be a slight annoyance, or I might end up even liking it. Or maybe I'm looking at a hand-grenade disguised as a chocolate egg. We'll see. So into it we go, with the opener a very short instrumental --- no, some old guy talking about ... don't know what. Title track has a nice power metal vibe to it, very choral and dramatic. Vocals may decide this, as it certainly sounds like the kind of music I would enjoy. Well, although there was a scream there at the beginning, the guy has a perfectly clear voice (think there's another vocal doing a scream/growl in the background) and I see nothing wrong with this at all. Standard power/melodic metal sound as far as I can hear. Yeah, the scream/growl (scrowl?) is distracting, but after all the death, black and viking metal I've listened to by now that doesn't upset me as once it did.
Guy sounds like Chad now. Urgh: that is torture! Seriously though, nothing wrong with this either. Well we're onto the fifth track and though I haven't noticed anything particularly special about this album, it's certainly not torture to get through. Sometimes the vocalist sounds like he may be using autotune, or if not his voice is very boyband-ish, which is probably the only thing I would have a problem about; the scrowls seem very at odds with the music though come to think of it. Can't really pick out any track I really like, or hate, so far. Some pretty good shredding here on “Perfect weapon”, and I can see why BVB are being compared to the likes of Motley Crue, though I don't think they're as good. “Knives and pens” sounds a bit Alesana to me, then the ballad is “The mortician's daughter”, nice acoustic number.
Yeah, as it goes on it's revealing itself to be pretty generic power rock/metal with nothing terribly new to offer. A little bland, a little formulaic. Not terrible, but not terribly good either. I suppose they thought using the scrowls was a USP, but sure bands like Lacuna Coil and Within Temptation among others have been using that format for years, so there's nothing new or innovative about that. Take that away and the man behind the screen is indeed pretty plain and powerless. “Never give in” could not be more banal, and lacks the strength of the convictions of the title, despite the pointless shouted chorus. Kiss these guys are not! “Sweet blasphemy” is not too bad and there's a nice acoustic sort of feel mixed with a little blues in the closer “Carolyn”. Yeah, not bad. Nowhere near torture though.
Torture Level: 0%