Videoclip of the Month!!!

Friday, August 12, 2011

The Air I Breathe - Great Faith In Fools

The Air I Breathe - Great Faith In Fools



The Air I Breathe is a North American Metalcore band and Great Faith In Fools is their debut album. This album was co-released by two separate labels ; Rise Records and Velocity Records. These guys are only a small young band, how did they get two labels because many bands struggle for just one! Well, there is definitely a good reason, in fact this album is a great reason of why people labels would sign this band. The Air I Breathe, since their debut EP Anathema has taked the underground metalcore scene by storm. When Great Faith In Fools was released, it spread through the internet like a disease and the “likes” on their facebook page increased dramatically. So why all the fuss? This album is all the fuss!

Great Faith In Fools is suppose to be the thing that makes or breaks The Air I Breathe and judging how the fans of metalcore reacted when this album was released, it made them. This album was better than their ep which was a technical masterpiece and like many good eps, it was the kind of thing that would be extremely hard to follow up. But they managed to do it, with style. As soon as you read the track listing for this album, you immediately recognize the tracks that were previously seen in their debut ep. Please don’t fret and worry about them not being as good as their originals because they are just the same, if not better.  I’m not sure what about this album gives it it’s charm because there are many, many bands with the same sound as these guys. But the only difference is how these guys put their music together. Now that is what sets them apart from the rest.

The first thing that hits you when you click play on this album is the sheer energy that is contained within the polycarbonate plastic strips in the CD. Their music hits you like flying into an asteroid at light speed while riding on a nuclear bomb. Yes my friends, it is that intense. It’s just how technical this album is and how heavy their breakdowns are. They are one of those metalcore bands that doesn’t care about emotional stuff, unlike Bullet For My Valentine or Atreyu.  They are probably the ones that defined emo metalcore. But that is totally different from what this band is about and it’s about high energy and heavy head banging. I wonder how many people will have an extremely sore neck after listening to this. It’s probably a big number.

Like I’ve already mentioned before that this album is technical, extremely technical! and tight as well. When people think of metalcore, they think of slow, unextreme and the most insane thing to hit the scene is August Burns Red. Well, The Air I Breathe is arguably more extreme and technical than August Burns Red ever was. I think they could even be described as being at a near melodic deathcore level, let’s say As Blood Runs Black (although the drumming isn’t as technical). Although the drumming is quite technical at times, the real technical charm lies in the guitar work. As soon as the first song starts, you introduced to some technical death style of guitar work immediately (even though it might only last for a couple of seconds at the most, it is still technical). But they use both melodic and unmelodic guitar work as well. It’s not just the one, which makes this album better.

But don’t get me wrong now, this entire album isn’t about chugga, chugga breakdowns/ riffs and technical guitars work. These guys have a melodic side to their music as well. Yes, there is a method to their madness, which makes itself more apparent once the songs progress and you get through the layer of technicality. In fact there is quite strong emotion in this album as well, very strong. The style of emotion creates an atmosphere rather than making you actually having emotion (if that makes sense). It promotes a positive atmosphere rather than making someone emotional. So basically there is not slit wrist type of music here (not much anyway). They achieve this with a few tricks they must have picked up;

The first one are clean vocals, for some odd reason, people are a sucker of clean vocals. Also, I’m not going to pretend that I’m somekind of person who is immune to this because I’m not. Clean vocals make everything happier and more emotional. Mainly because there is nothing else going for it, there is not energy or atmosphere that is typically associated with clean vocals. Well, not the ones here anyway, there are a few people who do create atmosphere with their voice, but the vocalist here doesn’t seem to achieve this. 

The next one is definitely the style of guitar work. There isn’t just technical death style guitar work, there is much more than that. There is technical death metal style of guitar work to melodic death metal style to metalcore style and everything in between. I believe that it’s the melodic death metalish style of guitar work that makes the emotion in their music stand head and shoulders above the rest. This is because it’s so happy, I don’t think there is any melodic death metal band that is sad (and doesn’t include symphonic elements, although the lyrics might tell a different story). The last style is the, normal, boring, common, generic metalcore guitar work. I don’t know why, but sometimes it makes the music quite boring. It seems like a little momentum is lost here.

Like I’ve mentioned before, this band has a little trouble keeping their music all together. It seems really loose at times and the momentum of the music sometimes is disrupted by this. I think that the rhythm guitars might be a little out of place when it comes to their music. For some reason it just doesn’t fit in! not only does it not fit in, it’s quite generic as well. But fortunately, this only happens a couple of times in the album so it’s not biggie until you hit those songs which are like this ( ie The Life They Promised). These guys also use two styles of distorted vocals, your abrasive deathcore/metalcore vocals and hardcoreish style of vocals. Although the metalcore/deathcore vocals fit in with their music quite well, it’s those dang hardcore ones that are the problem. Like the generic rhythm guitar work, it’s just something about them that just doesn’t fit in.

Overall, this is an excellent album and it’s not wonder why the fan base of The Air I Breathe has skyrocketed since the release of this album, and what do you know, it’s not just a co-incidence. This is the very reason why these guys have the potential to be one of the biggest metalcore bands out there. There is absolutely no reason why they cannot possibly achieve this in the near future. They already have quite a fan base. This album could be responsible for their success, well, as long as they don’t stuff up their next album. Even though there might be a couple of flaws to this album, namely the tightness of the music, there is nothing that discredits this album heavily. I recommend this album to any melodic death/deathcore fans and metalcore fans out there. This will sure to satisfy because it has almost everything that is normally expected from a band from that genre and isn’t that what we want? I recommend the tracks Here’s To Letting Go and Deliverance because I think that they represent this band/album really well and if you like those two tracks, don’t hesitate to get the entire album because it’s worth it. I give The Air I Breathe’s Great Faith In Fools a 17/20. 


2 comments:

  1. You are terrible at reviewing an album, your lack of knowledge makes this interview really weak.

    ReplyDelete
  2. yeah beacuse this is obviously an interview...

    ReplyDelete

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