AS CITIES BURN “Son, I Loved You At Your Darkest”
Here’s more mostly screamy, heavy music from the Solid State camp. Falling decidedly between the skull-bashing metalcore of THE CHARIOT, and sister-label rising stars, UNDEROATH, with an additional penchant for the atmospheric wanderings of HOPESFALL or the sadly defunct BELOVED, AS CITIES BURN have a well-varied, haunting sound at their fingertips. Son, I Loved Your At Your Darkest is a fairly comprehensive, but inconsistent work. The album goes through a series of moods and themes, creating space among fierce, thick riffs, and dramatic, start/stop/stomp rhythms. Momentum is both a friend and foe to the band, and remains one of the most puzzling aspects to the group’s songwriting. While the first half of this album isn’t filler per se, it takes more than a little while for Son, I Loved You At Your Darkest to warm up. Around the seventh track, slightly beyond the halfway point, things truly begin to get interesting however. Dissonant guitars paint an alarming, but dismal aura on “Wake Dead Man, Wake,” while intense noodling on the following “Admission: Regret,” transforms the rhythm section from eerily complacent, to malevolently agitated. The momentum doesn’t stop there, with the ninth track, “One: Twenty-Seven,” serving as a stockpile of brooding riffs and (finally) bombastic drumming. AS CITIES BURN’s drummer must feel like his hands are handcuffed with so many of these songs – the urgency to breakout into madcap percussion, stifled by an ominous gloom of restraint and shifting dynamics. The final track, “Of Want and Misery: The nothing that kills,” suffers from being too grandiose for its own benefit (wearing out its welcome after the four minute mark), but at the same time, its epic organization is the culmination of the temperment that has been building throughout. Of the ten tracks, only one, “Bloodsucker Pt. II” falls into straight-forward convention. Not suprisingly, it’s the most memorable song off the release, and the most likely to achieve attention as a single if hasn’t done so already. As this track is placed fourth on the album, it’s the only real “peak,” among the opening doldrums. Son, I Loved You At Your Darkest asks a lot from the listener in terms of patience while AS CITIES BURN settles into its foundation. Rarely do I come across an album that is so lopsided in terms of sequencing that I’d prefer to ignore the first half of it in its entirety. The potential is here for original, riveting musical creation, but overall, this album is something of a tease.
Solid State
