During the past five years or so it has become increasingly common for young bands to play a combination of melodic-pop and heavier rock set to a mixture of singing and screaming. Occasionally these bands add in a metallic or atmospheric element, leading to the use of breakdowns, keyboards, and noodly guitar riffs. Subsequently, a lot of this music has been pretty bad because of its scattered and contrived style. While Rise, Victory, and Equal Vision Records have each released landmark records in the past, they are all responsible to some degree for releasing this kind of mucky music, and three of their latest signings – BEFORE THEIR EYES, DRIVER SIDE IMPACT, and PIERCE THE VEIL, respectively – couldn’t prove this to be more true; well, mostly. To begin with, it should be noted that the three bands mentioned are in no way affiliated other than the fact all of their debut albums have been released around the same time, all three albums arrived in my mailbox recently, and I think they all have similar musical traits (thus, out of convenience and ambition, a triple album review has been written). In addition, the music description in the preceding paragraph is not necessarily an all-encompassing description of the bands in question. For the best results, I put all three albums in my stereo on shuffle after listening to each on its own a few times. From this method I was able to come to a conclusion about each band. PIERCE THE VEIL is easily the most ambitious, if not also the most scattered, of the three; moreover, their record has a “big” feel to it, and their vocalist, Victor Fuentes, has the most recognizable, if not also the most nasally and kid-sounding, voice. BEFORE THEIR EYES is the heaviest of the bunch but also the most faceless. They have a supremely hard time sticking to one genre as any one song could be influenced by COPELAND, UNDEROATH, HE IS LEGEND, CHIODOS, EVERY TIME I DIE, etc, etc. DRIVER SIDE IMPACT is the worst band of the group. While they do not scream (something the other bands utilize to mixed results), the instrumentation sounds like it was muddied-up by producer Sal Villanueva to hide their inferior abilities (not to mention their “heavy breakdown parts” are insanely laughable). The vocalist offers nothing to help their cause as his performance is about as forgettable as the sugar-free oatmeal I just had for breakfast. As far as promise for the future goes, we’ll use the “save the best for last” system. For starters, DRIVER SIDE IMPACT gives me no hope. These Ohio-natives aren’t even up to par with some of their similar labelmates, let alone bands like BEFORE THEIR EYES or PIERCE THE VEIL. BEFORE THEIR EYES (also from Ohio) aren’t bad at playing all the different genres they attempt on their album, but the whole time I can’t help to think they’ve got serious identity issues. The troubling thing with BEFORE THEIR EYES is even if they did pick one kind of sound and run with it, they’re still going to be playing in a terribly overcrowded genre regardless, and I’m not quite sure they have the chops yet to stand out. To be fair, I had some reservations about including PIERCE THE VEIL in this group. Some of the guys used to be in a band called BEFORE TODAY and showed a lot of promise with an aggressive melodic punk/hardcore approach. With PIERCE THE VEIL, however, they’re more in the vein of COHEED AND CAMBRIA, THE MARS VOLTA, and KADDISFLY. Like those bands, these fellas completely avoid “structure,” occasionally write a catchy tune, and incorporate lots of experimentation into their music (the Latin-influenced drumming in “I’d Rather Die Than Be Famous” is killer). Unfortunately, their use of screaming is detrimental as Victor Fuentes is more than capable of carrying the songs, even if he does sing through his nose. PIERCE THE VEIL has the chance to write some amazing music, and while they easily top the other bands mentioned in this review, they’d have a hard time standing out amongst the bands that have influenced them at this point.

Rise/ Victory/ Equal Vision