Album number Three is.....
Johnny Truant – No Tears For The Creatures
Ah well I’m immediately out of my element as we appear to be dealing with husky shouty grunt metal but that’s the whole point of this little experiment. Opener the Grotesque kicks the album off nicely, with some fast drumming and some nice variations on the fundamental guitar line. The vocals aren’t bad but to the untrained ear seem to lack the character or tone of a Corey, Heptfield, Dickenson or even Flynn. The track powers along very nicely until a rather unimaginative break down with long screams and slower guitar and the song rather limps to a conclusion, still not a bad opener.
Death Rides is a real head banger or mild nodder (seeing as I’m sitting with a laptop on my lap). There’s a brilliant elasticity to the guitar line that opens the track and the drumming fast and frantic it sounds almost as though it’s chasing you and gaining fast. The conclusion is strong with the guitars droning like a kind of outer spacial interference, the only down note really is the vocals that sound unimaginative, it’s all rather been there, done that, chose not to buy the T-Shirt at the time and is still very comfortable with that decision.
The vocals pick up more so on Last Arms of The Apocalypse adding urgency to the record and sounding like the yelp of Enter Shikari when their tracks are kicking in overdrive (that’s the non shit bit in their songs). Apocalypse is also one of the longer offerings on this record, and it’s better for it, the guitars and drumming patterns switch up nicely and they seem to have plenty of ideas. Lets hope they haven’t shot their load to soon.
Widower is a more generic affair but none the less urgent and to the point. The guitar work is great if not overly original, it sounds like your running through a maze and a dragon is chasing you and your forced out of panic with guitar spike to take an ill considered turn. It’s only 1:49 and that’s a very smart decision by the band as the track thrives on the rush, sounds like a smart choice for a single or double A side to me.
Crush and Devour lyrically doesn’t seem to match up with the guitar line for the first three minutes but it has been smartly constructed so after some unimpressive but sweet sounding guitar wankery one big screaming chorus comes in and the drums and guitars pound and punish there way to an excellent conclusion, the listen has been beaten to a pulp and is ready to be devoured, and for sixty seconds they loved it.
As the album approaches its midway point it could really do with a change in pace or delivery, but it doesn’t arrive instead In Alcoholia delivers one decent idea on guitar stretch out over five minutes. The lead singer also seems to only have one gear, and has shown little in the way of subtly. Dead Ship Sinking does little to shake this assertion, the guitar work is nice and rather retro in places and the drummer does a superb job of merely keeping up. The vocalist is really letting the team down however, he could really do with learning from Frank Carter, Gallows have a more stripped down punk sound but Frank tends to scream his lungs out too, but Frank’s timing is excellent and complement the accompanying music really well and often follows or introduces movements in the music. Johnny Truant just seems to scream generically with little sense of what’s going on around him, except for the customary and thoroughly played out giant grunt leading into a guitar slow down. With precious little tonal variety or intuition from the lead singer you can’t help but feel there is a lot of wasted effort from his talented band mates on tracks that rage beyond the four minute mark. His band mates tend to produce three or four creative ideas and changes up per track unfortunately for them the vocalist can’t come up with even one more idea across eleven tracks.
The worst sins of the vocalist are most evident on Fog Lights, the band start slow with the guitars creating image of a sandstorm slowing blowing left to right before going into an apocalyptic guitar riff however this guitar work which sounds total unique from the rest of the album is lost when the singer burst in with the same old shit, I mean seriously swap the vocal track with track one would anyone even notice? If only Corey Taylor had a chance to sing over this track you just know he’d nail it. The guitar work is really pleasant with euphoric moments, Arabic moments and of course there’s plenty a brutal beating to go around and only the refrain of “Where Is Heaven” by the lead singer really fits the track. The guitar track blends seamlessly into closer The Weeping, Wailing, And The Gnashing Of Teeth, the vocalist is back with the “Wraaah-Wah” Enter Shakiri style vocals which just seem totally inappropriate. The windy sounds again pick up in this track and it feels like a part two of an epic created by the previous track. Man the tracks really sound good when there’s no singing, even when it’s a more striped down guitar part. The singer just in time for the albums closer has nearly uncovered what a melody is but of course he gives up, shouting is much easier after all. “What does it mean for us to live” the lead singer bellows as this two piece final salvo reaches its final refrain. I have to say were I ordering this album I’d take this double salvo and stick them smack bang in the centre of the album and make it a take it or leave it epic centre piece where it can have real impact. It really needed to have been put out there before the vocals had become stale and would have help give the album a much needed breather and change of pace in the middle.
Overall Thoughts: The guitar work certainly deserves compliment, while its not Evile in terms of difficulty its very creative and hopes across several genres of metal and regular rock and indie (just sped up a bit) and the drumming never lets up. I’ve ranted and raved enough about the vocals which do add a certain visceral zip to the shorter tracks but just doesn’t have the required tonal changes ups to match the ever changing moods of the guitar and drum work its a real shame, because this isn’t far off being a very good album. Doctor Dave’s prescription: sack your singer while you have the chance. Otherwise your doomed to play second fiddle to Killswitch Engage, Alexisonfire and ugh...Enter Shikari.
One final pointer for Johnny Truant; less is more, sure no one likes boring repetitive tracks but just because you have 50 ideas and only ten tracks of space on an album doesn’t mean you should you should cram everything you can possible think of into each track. Plenty of potential, in need of some polish and a good sieving. (***1/2)
Tracks To Download: Fog Lights, The Weeping, The Wailing and The Gnashing Of Teeth, Widower, Last Arms Of The Apocalypse
Gareth’s Professional Opinion:
Johnny Truant is a British metal core band hailing from Brighton on the south coast of merry old England. No Tears for the Creatures is the third album to be released by the band, being released last month in the U.K and awaiting a September release in the United States.
From the opening track, The Grotesque, the bands sound is one of uncompromising and richly diverse influences. With guttural vocals that fluctuate between hardcore and death metal, resulting in the band being seen as one of the new wave of deathcore bands by some, there’s infact far more going on here beneath the service to simply pigeonhole this band. The band themselves cite classic bands such as Botch, Cave In, Will Haven, Poison the Well and even Neurosis and death metal pioneers Immolation. With all that in mind it’s really no surprise that the end result is an album that fluctuates between full on, in your face metal, brutal hardcore, and often incredibly beautiful and thoughtful melodic hooks. Maybe the band won’t win any awards for being experts in their respective musical fields, but the drumming is certainly superb, whilst the guitars are well arranged, perfectly complimenting the range of the vocalist. What I love about this band is the way they can go from a really sick hook that sounds like a bomb going off in your face, to moments of really touching melody with the guitars and drums that makes the screamed, growled vocals sound less like a man wanting to fight everyone and anyone, to being someone immensely aware of their own vulnerability, unaware to change the things that threaten them. But when this band do get going and are in full on groove metal mode, it’s foot tapping, head banging perfection.
Ah well I’m immediately out of my element as we appear to be dealing with husky shouty grunt metal but that’s the whole point of this little experiment. Opener the Grotesque kicks the album off nicely, with some fast drumming and some nice variations on the fundamental guitar line. The vocals aren’t bad but to the untrained ear seem to lack the character or tone of a Corey, Heptfield, Dickenson or even Flynn. The track powers along very nicely until a rather unimaginative break down with long screams and slower guitar and the song rather limps to a conclusion, still not a bad opener.
Death Rides is a real head banger or mild nodder (seeing as I’m sitting with a laptop on my lap). There’s a brilliant elasticity to the guitar line that opens the track and the drumming fast and frantic it sounds almost as though it’s chasing you and gaining fast. The conclusion is strong with the guitars droning like a kind of outer spacial interference, the only down note really is the vocals that sound unimaginative, it’s all rather been there, done that, chose not to buy the T-Shirt at the time and is still very comfortable with that decision.
The vocals pick up more so on Last Arms of The Apocalypse adding urgency to the record and sounding like the yelp of Enter Shikari when their tracks are kicking in overdrive (that’s the non shit bit in their songs). Apocalypse is also one of the longer offerings on this record, and it’s better for it, the guitars and drumming patterns switch up nicely and they seem to have plenty of ideas. Lets hope they haven’t shot their load to soon.
Widower is a more generic affair but none the less urgent and to the point. The guitar work is great if not overly original, it sounds like your running through a maze and a dragon is chasing you and your forced out of panic with guitar spike to take an ill considered turn. It’s only 1:49 and that’s a very smart decision by the band as the track thrives on the rush, sounds like a smart choice for a single or double A side to me.
Crush and Devour lyrically doesn’t seem to match up with the guitar line for the first three minutes but it has been smartly constructed so after some unimpressive but sweet sounding guitar wankery one big screaming chorus comes in and the drums and guitars pound and punish there way to an excellent conclusion, the listen has been beaten to a pulp and is ready to be devoured, and for sixty seconds they loved it.
As the album approaches its midway point it could really do with a change in pace or delivery, but it doesn’t arrive instead In Alcoholia delivers one decent idea on guitar stretch out over five minutes. The lead singer also seems to only have one gear, and has shown little in the way of subtly. Dead Ship Sinking does little to shake this assertion, the guitar work is nice and rather retro in places and the drummer does a superb job of merely keeping up. The vocalist is really letting the team down however, he could really do with learning from Frank Carter, Gallows have a more stripped down punk sound but Frank tends to scream his lungs out too, but Frank’s timing is excellent and complement the accompanying music really well and often follows or introduces movements in the music. Johnny Truant just seems to scream generically with little sense of what’s going on around him, except for the customary and thoroughly played out giant grunt leading into a guitar slow down. With precious little tonal variety or intuition from the lead singer you can’t help but feel there is a lot of wasted effort from his talented band mates on tracks that rage beyond the four minute mark. His band mates tend to produce three or four creative ideas and changes up per track unfortunately for them the vocalist can’t come up with even one more idea across eleven tracks.
The worst sins of the vocalist are most evident on Fog Lights, the band start slow with the guitars creating image of a sandstorm slowing blowing left to right before going into an apocalyptic guitar riff however this guitar work which sounds total unique from the rest of the album is lost when the singer burst in with the same old shit, I mean seriously swap the vocal track with track one would anyone even notice? If only Corey Taylor had a chance to sing over this track you just know he’d nail it. The guitar work is really pleasant with euphoric moments, Arabic moments and of course there’s plenty a brutal beating to go around and only the refrain of “Where Is Heaven” by the lead singer really fits the track. The guitar track blends seamlessly into closer The Weeping, Wailing, And The Gnashing Of Teeth, the vocalist is back with the “Wraaah-Wah” Enter Shakiri style vocals which just seem totally inappropriate. The windy sounds again pick up in this track and it feels like a part two of an epic created by the previous track. Man the tracks really sound good when there’s no singing, even when it’s a more striped down guitar part. The singer just in time for the albums closer has nearly uncovered what a melody is but of course he gives up, shouting is much easier after all. “What does it mean for us to live” the lead singer bellows as this two piece final salvo reaches its final refrain. I have to say were I ordering this album I’d take this double salvo and stick them smack bang in the centre of the album and make it a take it or leave it epic centre piece where it can have real impact. It really needed to have been put out there before the vocals had become stale and would have help give the album a much needed breather and change of pace in the middle.
Overall Thoughts: The guitar work certainly deserves compliment, while its not Evile in terms of difficulty its very creative and hopes across several genres of metal and regular rock and indie (just sped up a bit) and the drumming never lets up. I’ve ranted and raved enough about the vocals which do add a certain visceral zip to the shorter tracks but just doesn’t have the required tonal changes ups to match the ever changing moods of the guitar and drum work its a real shame, because this isn’t far off being a very good album. Doctor Dave’s prescription: sack your singer while you have the chance. Otherwise your doomed to play second fiddle to Killswitch Engage, Alexisonfire and ugh...Enter Shikari.
One final pointer for Johnny Truant; less is more, sure no one likes boring repetitive tracks but just because you have 50 ideas and only ten tracks of space on an album doesn’t mean you should you should cram everything you can possible think of into each track. Plenty of potential, in need of some polish and a good sieving. (***1/2)
Tracks To Download: Fog Lights, The Weeping, The Wailing and The Gnashing Of Teeth, Widower, Last Arms Of The Apocalypse
Gareth’s Professional Opinion:
Johnny Truant is a British metal core band hailing from Brighton on the south coast of merry old England. No Tears for the Creatures is the third album to be released by the band, being released last month in the U.K and awaiting a September release in the United States.
From the opening track, The Grotesque, the bands sound is one of uncompromising and richly diverse influences. With guttural vocals that fluctuate between hardcore and death metal, resulting in the band being seen as one of the new wave of deathcore bands by some, there’s infact far more going on here beneath the service to simply pigeonhole this band. The band themselves cite classic bands such as Botch, Cave In, Will Haven, Poison the Well and even Neurosis and death metal pioneers Immolation. With all that in mind it’s really no surprise that the end result is an album that fluctuates between full on, in your face metal, brutal hardcore, and often incredibly beautiful and thoughtful melodic hooks. Maybe the band won’t win any awards for being experts in their respective musical fields, but the drumming is certainly superb, whilst the guitars are well arranged, perfectly complimenting the range of the vocalist. What I love about this band is the way they can go from a really sick hook that sounds like a bomb going off in your face, to moments of really touching melody with the guitars and drums that makes the screamed, growled vocals sound less like a man wanting to fight everyone and anyone, to being someone immensely aware of their own vulnerability, unaware to change the things that threaten them. But when this band do get going and are in full on groove metal mode, it’s foot tapping, head banging perfection.
The state of metal, hardcore and punk has been lambasted by some for tis lack of depth over the last few years. These are certainly fair criticisms. Certainly some of this is down to nu-metal. The drive to recover from the butchery inflicted on the alternative music scene by this absolute slight on humanity has been slow. Nu Metal arguably put real metal back ten years. But the recovery is underway. Best of all, this band are British, and it’s one of the best albums you’re going to hear in metal this year. A classic in the making by a band who have to be watched.
Conclusion: One of my favourite metal albums of the last ten years. 9/10
Download: Death Rides, Crush and Devour, In Alcoholica, Dead Ships Sinking, Fog Lights
