Is it supposed to hurt?

Are you ready to listen to some serious growling mixed in with a few soothing lyrics about suicide? From Autumn to Ashes, self-proclaimed "metalcore" music takes a hybrid approach to mix metal, rock and emo. Get ready to bang your head into some concrete walls.\nThe album starts out with distorted riffs which bleed into Benjamin Perri's screaming in "Where Do You Draw the Line." What's really amazing about this band is that the drummer actually does the main vocals. Francis Mark manages to cool down the growl fest by throwing in some emo vocals. Oddly enough, Mark's whiny vocals are nearly identical to those of Jack's Mannequin's Andrew McMachon. \n"Innaprope" starts out with mellow acoustic riffs which mix into heavy distortion. The band adds in some backup vocals to ease the agony of the song, but their attempts are futile.\n"Sugar Wolf" starts out with loud harmonious yelling which becomes intertwined with lyrical riffs and syncopated beats. This is a song one could fairly well tolerate as opposed to "Vicious Cockfight," which draws into the band's signature style of starting the song with light lyrical acoustic riffs and then surprising you with heavy mono-note growling. Just when you feel like your head will fall off, the whiny voice of Francis Mark creeps up to remind you that life is indeed horrible if not scary. The song does have some good qualities -- occasionally you hear some great guitar riffs.\n"Streamline" is a great song if compared to the first few. Two qualities set this song apart from the first four. One quality is that there is less growling. Secondly, the song has some great vocal harmony. Just as you fall into a great mellow groove "The Funny Thing About Getting Pistol Whipped Is…" totally knocks you back into head-banging reality. The next few songs are similar in style and composition. \nThe last song, "Abandon Your Friends," faintly reminds me of The Vines. The vocals are drawn out and filled with fatigue as they beg you to "abandon our best friends." As I am about to abandon this album, I will increase its rating by half a letter grade since the artwork on the cover kicks some real ass. However, even the artwork cannot make me think fondly of these guys. For those music masochists that really enjoy mutilating their ear drums, your messiah has come. For everyone else, prepare yourself, because the music apocalypse has arrived.