Album Review: 36 Crazyfists - “Rest Inside The Flames”

I have the previous 36 Crazyfists album, and “A Snow Capped Romance” was a screamo album with a truly unique voice among many clones. The problem with the previous outing was while it stood out from it’s peers, only the first 3 songs were good, with the rest being filler.

This time around the band attempts to heavy things up, especially in department of chugga style breakdowns that have a lot of 2 guitar interplay. Unfortunately, 2 guitar interplay with chugga style breakdowns is an art mastered by Killswitch Engage. The Killswitch Engage comparisons only get worse in the song “Elysium” where Howard Jones adds lots of guest vocals.

The bands biggest strength is vocalist Brock Lindow, with his somewhat unique voice provides a slightly different take on singing instead of the typical emo whine. He stretches his clean vocal style even further in “We Cannot Deny” singing similar to The Tea Party. Of course, the album is filled with slightly more screamo style screaming than it is singing, but this time around, Brock seems a bit more focussed on proper diction and improved delivery, and unfortunately his scream sounds a little less unique.

The album has a few more faults. The song “The Great Descent” uses an effect on the guitar sort of resembling playing through water, and directly conjuring Korn in their heyday, and “Midnight Swim” seems almost full of screamo cliches, sing-along style choruses and even having a slight pop-punk feel, an obvious attempting at a single.

“Rest Inside The Flames” is stronger overall than “A Snow Capped Romance”, but at the same time trades in having just a few strong songs for that strength. What would you call an album that’s a way point between mostly filler and catchy songs?

3/5

36 Crazyfists
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