Shattered Sun are a six piece American metal band from Alice, Texas. They started out in 2005 and have been putting out material pretty consistently including their new full-length LP, ‘Evolution of Anger’.
“Keep Your Eyes Shut” opens like a ripper, with no intention to cease. I would have preferred a more dynamic chorus as the song kept progressing with the clean singing reminding me a lot of Papa Roach. The drums, while on point and unrelenting, are a bit repetitive. “Blame” takes the same approach that the first song took. It’s nothing new in the arsenal of metalcore and offers nothing innovative to the album at all.
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“Declassified” offers some sense of a variation with a hint of tasty drumming by Nick Garcia. The vocals by Marcus Leal are very one dimensional. They don’t offer any emotion except for rage, and considering there are plenty of bands out there who do a similar style, it would help to incorporate various other emotions as well. What starts out as an enjoyable song ends up sounding very much the same as the first two tracks. “Hollow Chains” may translate very well live and Shattered Sun seem to have been intelligent in how they’ve crafted this song. The chorus and solos are pretty tasty and easy to dig.
“Out For Justice” shows what Garcia is capable of, but any attention to the musician is drowned out by vocals that are, in my opinion, far too loud in the mix than they should be. “Die For Nothing” offers something new and different from the sonic onslaught that the listener has been subjected to so far, only to reel it back and offer the same metalcore elements that we are so familiar with. “Burn it Down”, “Like Gasoline” and “Terminal” do absolutely nothing for me as they sound like a rehash of the kind of songs that I have been listening to for the past hour. The closing track “Hope Dies” introduces some musical ideas that did get me hooked on. I could hear some Gojira influences and the chorus is not bad at all.
I have mixed feelings about this album. At some moments it sounds very promising. At others, it is very tiring to listen to the songs one after the other. Writing a metalcore record today does seem harder and there are many instantly identifiable aspects to it, and if the listener can figure it out, it becomes a bland listening experience.
While I acknowledge the fact that writing a full length LP in a studio takes a lot of effort, thought, collective contribution from a lot of people, over a long period of time, I cannot be dishonest in my opinion of this particular effort. The songs will most definitely be well received by die hard fans of Shattered Sun but for me personally, this record did not do a whole lot. I found it hard to find things I could latch on to and that is something I consider very important when I am listening to a record. I could not see myself buying this or listening to it multiple times. Having said that, I would definitely look forward to their future releases because there certainly were elements of excitement that I adored and I am pretty sure they’re pretty awesome live. I know that the LP is called ‘Evolution of Anger’ but if every song is going to sound angry and constantly intense, there isn’t a lot of evolution to be witnessed.