I’ve looked at this CD worryingly for the past few weeks. I can tell it’s a cliché-in-a-box without going anywhere near it, yet I know that I have to for my fellow man’s sake. I get roughly halfway through this CD and I realise that I’m not quite sure how many songs I’ve listened to. It completely lacks any distinction between songs except for pauses.
Devoid of the catchiness of Atreyu and lacking when it comes to melody department, what I will say for Scars of Tomorrow is that this CD is very, very well produced. Ed Brooks has done a fabulous job here in what I would consider to be very difficult circumstances. It’s too anthemic and structured in a way dissimilar to the more metallic hardcore releases around at the moment and in that way it comes across as trying just a bit too hard. That isn’t to say I didn’t find brief moments of solace; the guitar work in parts is great and the drums do the job adequately, but the stomach-based screaming (rather than the throatier stuff you’d get in a poppier record) just doesn’t seem to, for want of a better word, ‘fit’. Track 6 ‘The Marks of Time’ is probably the only track I can say I actually like, rather than find tolerable, and the atmospheric mess that is track 8 should have been blown apart by some kind of firearm before it even hit the cutting room floor, never mind making it into the final record.
I have absolutely no doubt that Scars of Tomorrow will find some success with this record, to what extent I’m not sure, but it ticks all the relevant A&R boxes and, as mentioned, it dots the ‘i’ and crosses the ‘t’ in ‘production’, but I can’t recommend this to anyone other than those who are probably already looking to buy it. For die-hard fans of Bleeding Through, Caliban, etc. only
www.scarsoftomorrow.net
Victory Records
Spud