Scream Your Name
Face to Face

This band has a very loud name and they are coming face to face with you. They are swiss and they are said to be going their own way, not bound by clichés and conventions. Yet they are sold with things like post-hardcore, metalcore, rock, alternative and electronic influences, so no clichés, yet they are described with conventional means. Hmm, the ambivalence runs thick but the press text is good as it also presents this band who rereleased their debut last year for an international crowd and we stand face to face with the second album. For a band that is meticulous and works hard on the details of their songs and sounds I find it strange that they do have a two-minute job for cover art.

Poppy modern metal is what we are dealing with, touches of metalcore with lots of catchiness and energy. Decent variation over a dozen tracks and the playing time is quite moderate as well. Dual vocals, clean and catchy as well as growly and… growly. Both of them harmonise very well, the album is very catchy either in the verses or the choruses, it is an album that is easy to get into. It sounds fairly fresh as well, now of course I am not the most prominent expert when it comes to this genre. They offer a good production as well, the sound is fresh and dynamic and the tempo is high. It is a bit of an ”in your face”-album.

It is a great album, energetic and catchy, powerful and melodic, uptempo and dynamic. It is an album of many faces, it fires of straight in your face with an opener that in a punkish way sets the highest speed and starts with an instant vocal line, excellent start. The song itself and the album isn’t very punkish but it is something of everything yet it is coherent and something Scream Your Namish I suppose. I think that they have a fresh and interesting sound, and I really like this album as it has every ingredient a good album should have and I think that its biggest benefit over its genre peers (meaning metalcore) is that it feels rooted in pop music rather than something metallic.

It is also brilliant that they dare to move their own way, not looking to follow conventions and do their their own thing. Sure, we can compare them with many but I still think they float somewhere outside the typical box. But as I stated earlier in this review: I am not that fluent in this genre so I might be wrong. But I can recommend this album, I don’t think it has any negative aspects, only positive ones.

There are a couple of songs that caught my attention, one is the opener In Reverse that as I have alluded to before, starts with a text line and it kicks you straight in the face from the get go, excellent song. It sets the tempo which is mostly high on this album but with some strong dynamics. The second song that really grabbed me was the tenth, Thank You that has a brilliant chorus that kicks the ass of most other choruses out there. These two are enough to grab your attention, but I also really like the seventh track With or Without You which is not a U2-cover. But all the tracks are great so we can conclude that this is a great album and that swiss precision is not a cliché after all.

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