In a world of music plagued by countless numbers of try-hard bands clamoring to be noticed for their mediocrity, Design the Skyline‘s first album “Nevaayagsyfb” or something (Nevaeh, 2011) is hands down the crowned king of bland. However I only came to this conclusion after listening to the album.
Their notorious video for demo song, “Surrounded by Silence” was the first thing I heard from this band, and, by the nine, is hilariously detrimental to my health. There had been a few times in my life where I would rather be fighting a tiger wearing porcupines over my current situation, but this was that. If I was to say, smoke a few cartons of cowboy killing cigarettes and then cough something up, I am positive it would still be more liked than this video. You can imagine how excited I was to do this review as my first.
After being pushed by a few good friends to try and at least give it a listen, I finally put this putrescent sputum into my car’s stereo and blared it for my three hour drive from visiting my parents. What better way to pass time than to think about all the different ways you can vomit blood from listening to something?
Nevaeh* starts out quite heavy with Crystal Swords Kill The Hordes with a nice and girthy breakdown. I started to change my mind about the experience until I got one of the lamest and weakest sounding chorus’ I have heard in a while. Typical scene whiny crap Ala every band like Asking Alexandria. There is a nice little guitar…solo…at the very end that surprised me though.
Next up is Reality Away, and I want this song away from me. The chorus’ are really starting to get to me already, and that isn’t a good sign. This song really doesn’t have anything special in it either. I started skipping this track after 2 or 3 listens.
Destroyer was another track I quite liked to be honest. It’s heavy and face-paced, but has some of the coolest drum parts from the album. Also the guitarist pops up again with a pretty cool tapping lead that has me questioning a few things, but I’ll get to that soon.
When Cybernetic Strawflower came on the first time I thought I’d accidentally put an Iwrestledabearonce song on somehow. The beginning of this song is actually pretty annoying to me. Once it gets towards the middle, another nice little breakdown and then….what in the shit is this? Another solo? What tits are they milking this nectar from? I just don’t get it. They aren’t really particularly difficult in the realm of things, but they sound incredibly good. My journey continues.
Nope, I was wrong. Another step back with Break Free From Your Life. I bet this song is really popular with the ladies. This is not a compliment. Probably the most mediocre and boring song on the album. I could see the last 30-45 seconds being fun at a show, but that’s as good as this song is getting. ONWARD!
…………………………………………wat. If you’ve been reading this article all the way through and then gone for a listen, I suspect that this is how you are going to be feeling at this point. Reverie comes out of no where with a jazz solo equipped with bass sweeps? It goes on to be a rather chill ambient instrumental song. This was played many times during my drive.
Witch of the Woods snaps you awake and punches you in the earlobes to start. It starts out heavy, keeps its pace, and has quite the punchy finale. Still nothing amazing in anyway, but fun I guess.
Ugh. Free for Infinity is one of those crap electronic songs with too much going on, and shitty muffled screams you can’t understand in the background. This is a fantastically poor excuse of filler…at least with Reverie they did something worth listening to.
Under The Blood Driven is another 2 minute breakdown bonanza. I find this to be a little bit annoying, because I thought they were going forward with the albums ending to do different things and instead this is the last real song and it’s just another basic beat down track. Oh well.
The final track on album Nevagrhaj is it’s title track and another instrumental. The song opens up sounding a lot like it could have been a Diablo 2 background music track. Pretty solid for a little ambient driving, but then I realized that this track is actually a little bit silly. Towards the end they added the sound of wind blowing. It’s really cheesy and unnecessary.
I don’t really get this album or this band. I just don’t. Basically Nevaughth is one giant sell out album. It’s everything popular with the scene rolled up into a shit filled falafel. Do you like shit in your falafel? Me neither. The problem I am having is that there are some genuinely good components to Design the Skyline and yet I still don’t have good things to say about it as a whole. Here is a member ranking to put my point into perspective.
Guitarists ****/****
They show a lot of talent, but still are stuck being the scene’s bitch. This makes me upset.
Bass ***/****
The one time I heard the bass, my jaw dropped. Y U NO MAKE YOURSELF MORE APPARENT.
Drummer ***/****
Again, far more talent than he’s showing. He probably has some of the coolest parts out of all the members spread the most evenly throughout Nevaehaha.
Vocalists */****
One thing that I noticed throughout the album was that the vocals were so inconsistent. The low growls either sound brutal, or they sound like hes fucking vomiting. Don’t even get me started on the fact you cup highs during recording. Cardinal sin of vocalists right there.
Clean Vocals 0/****
In a genre of shitty…whiny…prison bitch vocals, the cleans on Nevathal are some of the most aggravatingly terrible. Go home.
Keyboards —/****
Keys get a whopping negative 3 stars, for how much they did for the band. If Design the Skyline ever reads this, cut the fat off your band and get rid of the keys and cleans.
In conclusion, Nevaederp is okay. As I said in the beginning it is completely average in every aspect. Maybe less than average for me, because of how much talent they show off, and yet they are STILL dicking around worrying about popularity via their looks and gimmicky ballocks. I haven’t put this music on since I stepped out of my car. That should tell you something. If you do happen to want to give this album a try, I would say start with Destroyer and Reverie. If you are a 16 year old scene bitch, head straight to the track Break Free From Your Life and whine about your parents or some shit. Whatever. Go pick up this album, or don’t. Nothing will be missed.
