Guitarist Madison Stolzer gave up the chance to play in Emarosa to form Rosaline. I’m not sure whether his decision will turn out to be justified or not. Rosaline‘s sound is heavily borrowed from the “screamo” bands of about five years ago. It’s vicious and passionate, granted, but it’s about as unoriginal as you can get. There are literally a million bands doing, or have done, the same thing as Rosaline since the turn of the century. Some do it worse, some do it better. It’s because of this that I just cannot find too many positives in ‘The Vitality Theory’.
OK, so there are some highlights. ‘London Lost Its Fog’ is a good track with some excellent gang vocals and the switching between singing and screaming is pretty seamless. The band are really aggressive when they scream, you can tell they bleed and sweat for their band and that’s a very good thing. But listen to this full album more than once and the songs start to blend into one another. Whereas Emarosa are more subtle and intelligent, Rosaline try and bludgeon their way through a course of a full-length to get their message across. It’s brutal, but on multiple listens it’s also a bit boring.
Fans of the genre will lap up tracks like ‘Model Ships’, but for every good track there’s something eerily similar or, in the case of ‘repeat after me’, a turgid “ballad” that should have been left on the cutting room floor. Bands like Rosaline are ten-a-penny and you can take it or leave it for me.