And on the 8th day, god was finished resting and said “Let there be breakdowns!” I’m pretty sure if anyone in Emmure has gone to church, that was more or less what they got out of the sermon. And here I thought Bury Your Dead and On Broken Wings were as mosh as it gets nowadays. Boy was I wrong! Connecticut’s favorite wiggerish purveyors of mosh for da masses are back with their third album in as many years, and it’s basically just more of the same. Or is it?
Everyone knows that, however controversial it is and for better or worse, Emmure ripped a few pages out of The Acacia Strain’s playbook and ran with it, and somewhere along the line they decided to take a bunch of notes in nu metal 101, specifically highlighting the “how to take all the worst aspects of nu metal and none of the (very little) good and make sic musikz bro” chapter. Nu metal deathcore? I’d actually hardly classify Emmure as such. Nu-moshcore would be much more fitting. But all this has been said before many times, and I’m not rip into the band too much. Despite their gimmicky nature and the whole “our label is milking us for everything they can get out of us till the next trend comes along” vibe I get, they’re actually not the worst band of this style (see: Liferuiner). “Felony” shows the band progressing…and by progressing I mean punching the nu metal influence knob up from “I think there’s something wrong with meeeee” to “oh my I am so dead inside and no one can see, darkness clouds me.” Translation: this shit is as nu as a Dope album. I’m trying to be as forgiving as possible here. I DO like some nu metal (Sevendust? Guilty as charged), and Emmure have their…moments, I guess…ah, what can ya do.
If you like breakdowns, you’ll love this band because that is all they do. They took the whole “break down the breakdown” idea and tore it a new one. If the sounds of Korn, Limp Bizkit, Coal Chamber made the darkness inside your tumultuous heart come alive with sinister abandon, these guys are definitely for you. If either of those or both of those are your things, then go buy this album, learn the lyrics, go to a show and mosh your balls off (or proverbial balls, if you’re a mosh chica). I hear they’re way fun live.
