OF HEARTS AND SHADOWS

I tried. Boy did I ever try to find some semblance of redeeming value in "Touching Base with a Chainsaw" by San Diego's OF HEARTS AND SHADOWS. I lost count of the number of times I started playing the disc only to run for the "stop" button, soon realizing that this is exactly the kind of album that makes metal and hardcore purists despise emo-soaked metalcore. Making it through the nearly hour's worth of material on this stinker more than once was an exercise in one's ability to withstand the worst conditions imaginable and come out the other side with a modicum of sanity still intact.

Everyone knows that the metalcore market has been saturated for some time now, but at least there are a handful of strong acts still kicking around. OF HEARTS AND SHADOWS is not one of them. "Touching Base with a Chainsaw" is one of the most generic, unmemorable slabs of ‘core crap I've ever heard. The formulaic screamo vocals alternating with atrocious clean singing would have been at least marginally tolerable had there been a single melody that stuck. No matter how many times I suffered through this one I could not find a track that I'd dub even remotely catchy. That alone spells the death knell for a band playing this style. No amount of cool riffs or hot leads can save it either, and the bitch of it is that those are few and far between too. The attempt at a progressive 11-minute epic called "Two Years" fails miserably as well. The melancholic delivery, heart wrenching croons, and acoustic guitars of album-closer "Aldernaun" offer nothing worthwhile either. At least the sound mix is muddy though, eh?

The horrible band name should have tipped me off, yet I charged forward with every intent of remaining objective as possible in assessing the possible merits of "Touching Base with a Chainsaw", but sometimes an album just plain sucks, and no amount of forced objectivity will save it. I suppose there are folks that would deem my analysis overly harsh, as surely the album is deserving of even the slightest bit of praise, based on the ability of a band to arrange 12 songs, write a handful of pummeling rhythms, and achieve some level of melodic sensibility. By golly, maybe those folks are onto something. As such, I'm doubling the rating.