Alesana’s new album, Where Myth Fades To Legend, combines loads of generic styles the band doesn’t do that well. There is nothing about the album that is better than mediocre, including the extremely dreadful lyrics and shriek-like screaming. Obviously the band themselves knew this and decided to use lyrics saying just that in the opening track, “This Is Usually The Part Where People Scream”: “Welcome to the show/ It’s a story you’ve heard a thousand times”. Yes it is.
Tracks like “Goodbye, Goodnight, For Good” include some decent and fun breakdowns if that’s something you’re interested in, but are damn near unlistenable if you enjoy music in any way. Even the lack of screaming in the verses of the song can’t save it because the vocalist is off-key and so bad that the screaming couldn’t kick in soon enough to cover it up.
“Seduction” is a smidge better, only because every element of Alesana’s sound doesn’t quite push the listener into wanting to stab puppies in the heart. The guitar riffs are almost solid and the vocalist is on his game a bit more, but there is no reason that a screamo band should ever have a track that lasts almost five minutes unless it’s being used as a torture technique by Jack Bauer.
It’d be smart to say that Alesana has produced one of the worst albums of the year, but there are so many other screamo bands that are sadly worse than them. Where Myth Fades To Legend is an album no one would wish upon even their greatest enemies. Someone put a bullet in this genre, please.
