Going into my first listen of Life Cycles, I had pretty high expectations seeing as I absolutely loved Deceiver, however, I was let down pretty badly. The vocals have basically been crapped all over and the instrumentation seemed to be dumbed down quite a bit from their last release.
The first thing that struck me about this album was that the vocals have changed a lot. The screaming sounds a lot less heavy this time around and they lack a lot of the power they had on Deceiver. I have no idea what happened to the clean singing, though. It just sounds like every other whiney-ish singer that litters the post-hardcore/metalcore genres and I didn’t enjoy it at all. I think a good comparison to think of would be the clean singing from Make Me Famous…except worse.
The instrumentation is also greatly lacking here, and while it does still retain the basic The Word Alive sound, it’s just a lot more simplified than earlier releases. Sure, there’s a few spots where the guitars decide to peek their heads out and make themselves known, but these moments are few and far between. Everything else just stays in the background and doesn’t make much of an impression at all.
If you’re into The Word Alive, then you might enjoy this album. I was a huge fan of Deceiver but didn’t really like Life Cycles at all. It’s incredibly boring compared to their other stuff and the vocals really kill the album.
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