CORPUS CHRISTI
"The Darker Shades of White" (Victory; 2009)
Reviewed by Metal Mark
This is the debut from Corpus Christi, who are not from Texas but rather hail from Cincinnati, Ohio. They fall somewhere around the metalcore category, not far from the works of Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying.
The lyrics promote the band's beliefs in a manner that is strong and none too subtle. The vocals are spewed forth with a fair amount aggression and when the clean approach is used, it helped to create enough of a contrast to give a real boost to their sound. Still, there were far too many occasions where the vocals were just going on with no break like there was just way too many words for him to have push out. When this happened, it took away from the flow of the song.
The music is loud, relatively heavy and they can stir up some melodies and really use them. The drums are consistent although not overwhelming. The guitars are flying on and spinning around and this was both a positive and a negative.
Okay, I get it: Corpus Christi are fast and they want to seem angry. To some extent this works because they have enough skill to know when to punctuate the music and where to place a hook. Yet they fall into an all too common trap that goes with fast music and that is letting the pace lead you rather than the other way around. That was exactly the feeling I got on more than one occasion from "The Darker Shades of White." The band is storming through, but they just didn't have enough control of what they were doing to manipulate the different parts of the song. They showed a few hints of some promise, but they were too fired up to just blast through and didn't really leave enough for me to remember exactly what it was they did.
Corpus Christi has some promise and it's certainly better than average for this style. They just to take a deep breath and let us soak in and savor what they are doing. To do this they may need to go back and approach their writing some more and spend some time working everything out.
For more information, check out http://www.myspace.com/corpuschristiad.
Rating Guide:
A classic. This record will kick your ass.
Killer. Not a classic but it will rock your world.
So-so. You've heard better.
Pretty bad. Might make a nice coaster.
Self explanatory. Just the sight of the cover makes you wanna hurl.
Copyright © 2009 by R.
Scott Bolton. All rights reserved.
Revised:
14 Oct 2024 14:01:58 -0400
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