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September 7, 2008 |
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01. It Starts Within
02. The Truth Is Sold
03. People Like You
04. Through Ashes We Crawl
05. Same Old Story
06. Dead Eyes See No Future
07. Walls Of Insecure
08. Idiot
09. Forsaken Love
10. Cursed By The Thought
11. Time Is Running Out
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Falkenberg, Sweden's BY NIGHT play rigid, uninspired, overproduced "Aggro-Metal" that I can't imagine being impressive to anyone, yet they have been touted as Sweden's "Best Unsigned Band" in some publications. A sterile production job, ill-conceived song-writing, and "anger" that is typical and cliched is all I could find on the group's second release "A New Shape Of Desperation".
Tracks like "Through the Ashes We Crawl" sounds like a High School Talent Show version of MESHUGGAH's "Destroy Erase Improve" days. "Same Old Story" opens with a "Seasons In The Abyss" type melody before immersing itself in the cut-out-bin Metal muck. Just when you think it can't get much more banal, the track "Dead Eyes See No Future" hits. Now, I’m not the biggest ARCH ENEMY fan, but I do know they had a song by the same name. Not an obscure track, either, as it was on Headbangers Ball, Uranium, etc. for a while. BY NIGHT’s song isn't a cover, either. Stuff like that bothers me, but I digress. BY NIGHT's "Dead Eyes See No Future" is a weak attempt at recreating the mid-tempo Industrial Metal of GODFLESH, which leads into yet another middle-of-the-road Modern Metal anthem, "Walls Of Insecure" which does nothing but showcase the band's poor English skills in the song-title-department.
The worst aspect of BY NIGHT has to be the vocals. In areas where melody might do the parts some service, the vocalist insists on pushing his monotone, charisma-deficient barks over every aspect of the music, completely suffocating it. Now it is true that there is an overabundance of bands doing the "Screaming Verse/Sung Chorus" thing, but some times the music calls for that kind of dynamic, which BY NIGHT completely ignore. Take "Forsaken Love". There are some strong parts there that are made into garbage due to a poor vocal performance. It's not so much that he's yelling, it's that he's yelling with no power or emotion or sense of what to do with himself. Simply put; he's boring. "Time is Running Out" is the best song on here, if only because there are no vocals at all.
"A New Shape Of Desperation"? Possibly. But in order to be desperate, one has to have a purpose or a desire they wish to obtain by any means necessary. It's difficult to say what BY NIGHT's purpose or desire is beyond being yet another forgettable face in the over-saturated Metal market. This brand of Metal may have turned some heads in the mid-'90s, when Groove Metal acts like FEAR FACTORY and MACHINE HEAD were the talk of the town, but 1997 was a long time ago. A REEEEEEEEEEEEAL long time ago.
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