Review Sort By Title - Independent Process 2011

Sort by title is not something that we do on Hallowed, we sort by name and we do not even to that one correctly. Sort by Title is an interesting name however to be sorted into our line of reviews, it is a name that promises very much. The name is not the only thing that is interesting, look at the small picture at the top left which is of the cover art which is very interesting. I was when I was going to the portal to download it thinking it was maybe a “beauty and the beast”-kind of album or maybe a journey through the darker and lighter inner thoughts of the mind told through five tracks. The title independent process seem to support the latter notion, but of course I had not read the information about it being metalcore and all of that as I never read information in advance as I am always looking for a fresh perspective when I am looking into a new album. One thing one can say from looking at a band photo following the tracks downloaded is that they are big fans of Suicide Silence.

Speaking of Suicide Silence the press information speaking of the band as being the Swedish answer to said band, something I cannot comment on as I have never heard Suicide Silence. What I can tell you is that the band is playing what is called metalcore which is extreme metal combined with hardcore, but with some added spice in form of melodic death metal of the Gothenburg kind and some industrial traces as well. They have also added some spice in form of female vocals in one of the tracks, some quite melodic traces are also there to be found for the one listening. If you have heard some metalcore bands that we have reviewed earlier like Bring Me the Horizon or We are the Damned you will know in what general region the band find themselves even if they may not be as terrible as said bands. The five tracks will take around eighteen minutes to play so you will be able to play it a lot if you like to.

The EP starts with a track called Into the Depths which is the track with female vocals, it is an interesting track with good melodies and the aggression between the original growler and the female vocals is quite fascinating and when I first heard this EP I was thinking that if it kept on like in the first track I would be thinking in terms of a rating of five. That was however not the case as they did not keep to that quality as the following three tracks are absolutely worthless, the melodies and dynamics from the first track is just gone and the vocals show themselves as the rubbish they really are. The final track called Stuck on the Curb is a good track as well which raises my expectation of a rating of two to one of three. That was after my first go through the EP and that opinion hasn’t really changed when I have gotten to know the album better, the tracks I figured to be good feels less so after ten additional plays and the bad tracks feels even worse, usually it tends of equal out over time but this album feels like it is getting from bad to worse over time so I am happy to end my playing of it now.

There are some good intentions in the first track which is good and the last track which is alright as well but the three in the middle is utterly useless and should only be called crap. I must point out though that this is the debut of this band and as I said they do show some prospects of good music to come if they move in the direction which I think they should move. So thinking of the fact that two tracks out of five are good a rating of two out of five would be good, but as Hallowed do not work with a five graded scale I had to convert it so a three out of seven feels like the logical conclusion of this album. There are some good stuff and good intentions but most of the times it falls quite flat, the three middle tracks are really awful but in contrast the first track is quite good and the last is also decent. That also explains the cover art I think, light for good music which is almost half and then dark for bad music which is a little over half of the EP. So a debut EP that shows some promise but in general it is quite a bad EP.

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