March of failure

Sometimes having an influential album is the worst thing that can happen to a band. Unearth’s latest release shows what happens when a band fails to meet their own standards.

After 2004’s genre defining The Oncoming Storm and 2006’s equally impressive III: In the Eye’s of Fire comes The March, a record that tries desperately to capture the spirit of Storm.  

Here we see Unearth move away from the livelier, dirtier sound of III and back towards the machine like precision of Storm. Although it may sound the same production wise, outside of a few highlights, the record sounds more like a collection of left over riffs than the ground breaking mixture of metal guitar heroics and hardcore mentality that made previous efforts so influential.

The record starts at its high point with opener “My Will Be Done.” Quite possibly the best song on the entire album, the track starts off with crushing guitar chunk and sweep-arpeggios, culminating with a great shout along chorus.

Other highlights include “Grave of Opportunities” and “We Are Not Anonymous.” Both songs make great use of guitar harmonies, shredding solos, and mosh-inducing breakdowns, all the things you expect from an Unearth song, but these songs are the exceptions.

This album contains at least five average songs, and two songs that are possibly the worst songs Unearth have ever written: “The Chosen” and “Letting Go.”

The main riff from the former sounds like something from a Whitesnake song and vocalist Trevor Phipps’ straight delivery of clichés like “We are the pulse of the world,” just adds to the mess. “Letting Go” suffers from being way to slow and having an opening riff that sounds exactly like the Killswitch Engage song “Prelude.”

Unearth’s new album The March needs more of the urgency and creativity that made III and The Oncoming Storm so exciting, and less of the computerized production and bland riffs that make up the majority of this junk.