I really wanted to like this but Fear Before have become a really, really strange band. They’ve always been a band that mixed up different genres and sounds to create their own sound, but ‘Fear Before’ takes things one step further and just sounds, well, bizarre. At times this record is clumsy, at others it’s just downright bad. How anyone can think they can get away with the lyric ‘there’s nothing stranger than a stranger, strangely stranger than a stranger’ in some kind of spoken-word circus style is, well, strange. And that’s not the only example as the lyrics are weird and poor, and sometimes both at the same time, throughout.
The guitar work has always been a standout on previous albums but this time round it seems buried in the mix. During ‘I’m Fine Today’ the guitars seem lower than ever before. there’s also a lot of layering which makes it sound a bit messy and muddy. But perhaps my biggest gripe is in the vocal delivery as Fear Before sing, talk, grunt and growl and often that’s all in the same sentence. The dual vocals work at times, but at others they just sound way off. Maybe it’s me, but it just comes across like such a mess at times.
That said, there are times when the band get it right. The spazzy, chaos of ‘Fear Before Don’t Listen to People Who Don’t Like Them’ harks back to a time when the band were much, much better and the closing ‘Review Our Lives (Epic)’ reminds me a little of a darker Trophy Scars. It’s just more passionate and angry and the guitars seem a bit more lively.
Overall this is disappointing and fails to live up to expectations. It just lacks the bite and punch of previous records and with some decidely dodgy lyrics it doesn’t quite work.