Emmure - The Respect Issue (2008)
When I was in my early teens, I got a -free- book from Walmart that promoted the upcoming Warped Tour (God, I wish I still had this book), complete with stickers and a CD including songs from like 15 different bands. It was a pretty good deal (you can't beat free unless the offer is "I'll give you AIDS for free" in which case I'd pay you because I'd give anything to fucking die) but I mainly grabbed it because it had some Less Than Jake shit in it. I remember listening to the CD and not really liking it, because it focused a lot on metalcore and deathcore, but for some reason, my mind singled out the band Emmure on the tracklisting as being a band I really couldn't stand, despite all of the bands sounding the same to my ears. I have no idea why: I had never even heard of them before, so it wasn't a thing of letting internet hate make me biased. Anyhow, in my young, ignorant and childish mind, I somehow convinced myself "maybe I'm just not old enough to like this music" and gave the CD to my older sister, and I don't even really know why: I knew she liked emo music, but I had never heard her listen to metalcore/deathcore. Anyhow, she disliked it, probably threw the CD out, but I didn't let that sway my opinion because I knew she was kind of a dumbass because she had said "bassists are pretty useless, all they do is keep the rhythm" in complete seriousness a few months before. Yes, she completely missed the point -that- fucking hard.
On a similar note, I think Emmure missed the point that if you make an album, you probably shouldn't just make the same fucking song over and over. "Oh, what an EASY shot at Emmure, you fat, ugly angry internet metalhead!! Your mom's a whore!!" You say to yourself, but fuck you, don't EVER call me a metalhead. I liked "Goodbye to the Gallows", I really did, it was a dumb album, but it was fun. This? This is not fun. This is basically the same fucking chugging riff over and over again until you don't know where the songs begin and end, outside of "Chicago's Finest" sounding like a retread of their "dramatic" material from the previous album, and "Dry Ice" actually being a nice, calm instrumental interlude to the last track, but the rest (and of course I'm not including small little instrumental sections that change it up, you silly) of this album sounds like complete fucking musical autopilot, and actually less heavy than the previous album since it feels like they abandoned all of their deathcore leaning for a much more profitable metalcore edge. Sure, it sounds like it could be fun to experience if you were drunk in the pit, but when you actually listen to it in your headphones, there's nothing of real interest going on, just mindless chugging and harsh vocals that can sound fucking -terrible- when Frankie Palmeri is doing high screams. It seriously sounds like so much fucking spit is flying from his mouth that it's unreal. What the fuck is there to respect on this album, really?
5/10
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