This is a new piece that I’m gonna start pumping out as much as I can, really just gonna be an overview of awesome bands that you might not have heard of, and why they hell they rock so much!
This first one is gonna be on Norma Jean, frankly because I seriously can’t stop listening to their second album tonight, and I’ve got an hour or so to burn before workout so why not get writing again.
These dudes are a ferocious bunch in the same vein of Every Time I Die, Converge and The Chariot (the original singer of Norma was the lead/founder of The Chariot ) – the music are chaotic and filled with anger, rage and venom-filled screams. As pretty much always, these screamed lyrics are stunning, a beautiful read and tells stories of pain and anguish. I’m not gonna make myself out to be their biggest fan, frankly I’ve only really listened to their second album, ‘O' God, The Aftermath: The Marvellous End Of The Exhausted Contender’, so this is gonna be mostly based on that but it’s the best place to start listening to ‘em, before I felt what I had heard was a little too heavy and screamy, though after getting into this album I feel I can totally get into the rest of their stuff.
The heaviness is there in spades and cuts through the speakers every second of the record until it stops. They have the jazz-like experimental-ness and break-neck tempo changes of Dillinger Escape Plan but instead of complex guitar riffs it’s just pure heavy chugs that just seem to get heavier than what was played before. ‘O’ God…’ was the first with current singer Cory Brandan Putman, so the style of singing was new, fresh but also kept with what Josh Scogin had done on previous releases – the album jumps from screamed spits to soft heart-filled vocals which is what you’d expect from a metalcore album made in the early-mid 2000’s only even the soft vocals are still pretty heavy, something that no other band really did.
The album is full of great tracks, most notably “Pretendeavor: In Reference To A Sinking Ship” which is a track that includes everything I’ve went over – the vocals both jump between ear bleeding and soul soothing, the lyrics and beautiful and talk of a fear of the unknown and insecurity that comes with that and even the title is something that I love, so much thought had been put into it, gives me more connection to it somehow.
So after all this, all I’m really gonna say is that you should be listening to these guys if your into the heavy chaos of metalcore; start off on this album and go from there. Until the next time I get obsessed with a band – RAWK IT!
