Anyone had a listen to 'Scream Aim Fire' yet? Fired it up yesterday so I thought I'd give a quick review.

Overall there's definitely a more aggressive feeling to the whole album, in the sense that they've gone for a more thrash metal feel as compared to the metalcore sound from their debut, but a lot of the record seems forced and lacking the genuine emotion of the first.

Guitar harmonies are excellent though and there are plenty of solos for the traditional metalheads and axe-wielders alike. The screaming has been toned down a bit though (Tuck had hectic vocal problems recently so that probably explains it) although there's plenty of growls and such to keep up the pace.

However, a lot of the tracks feel like a huge step back in terms of the band's growth. There's PLENTY of Metallica influence in a few songs (just listen to the third repeat of 'Right now it's killing time' from the opener, 'Scream Aim Fire'), as well as prominent heavy double bass drumming and some obviously influenced lyrics. Speaking of which, the lyrics themselves are often quite cliched, but a couple of fantastic 'ballads' saved them in this department. The general feeling for me though is they could've done some breakthrough stuff if they'd nailed a more 'indie-sounding' sequel to 'Hand of Blood.'

I also detected a fair bit of influence from other bands like Killswitch Engage (also big fans of pinch harmonics), Avenged Sevenfold (most notably the harmonies and a lot of the lead fills, doubled-up melodies and octaves) and Atreyu here and there. There's a presiding theme of war and violence too which seems very cliched in this genre: I found the more relationship-centred debut album to be much more genuine.

Overall it's an enjoyable listen though, but I can't help feeling like this'll be their last decent album if they're going to stray from their own unique sound that they seemed to leave behind this time around.

I give it a 7/10.

The video for the first single, 'Scream Aim Fire':

I sincerly hope that this single isn't the best track on the album.

It just lacks the emotional power and content thats was present in the previous album. The mettalica influence just doesn't seem to fit well with the lyrical content.



I was actually looking forward to this, that has been heavily deflated!

Try 'Hearts Bust Into Fire,' 'Waking The Demon' (closest thing to previous album sound) or 'Say Goodnight' if the first single isn't your cup of tea.

As I mentioned above, you'll probably find the more ballad-style songs to be better than the pseudo-aggressive ones.