Aiden – Nightmare Anatomy

I remember when I first reviewed Aiden‘s Dead Teenager Records release, Our Gang’s Dark Oath. I had never heard of them before a friend introduced them to me and I was amazed. The CD was great and I told everyone to “remember to keep your eyes open for the name of Aiden, because they will blow up soon.” And well, it turns out they blew up a bit quicker then I assumed. And it’s been a little over a year and they are releasing their sophomore album – but this time on Chicago’s respected Victory Records; and sure enough, they’ve started to blow up.

Unfortunately, they seem to be blowing up for some of the wrong reasons. And while Nightmare Anatomy is still pretty good, they seem to be missing that little touch that made their debut some memorable. There are some songs, like Die Romantic, Knife Blood Nightmare, Genetic Design For Dying and See You In Hell… which shows that certain touch and are worthy of a few listens, but most of the other songs seem to be lacking that. The worst part seems to come from Wil’s vocals. Throughout their debut, his vocals are strong, confident and sporadic – just go to purevolume and listen to I Set My Friends On Fire and you’ll hear that. Whereas on here, they seem to have undertaken a bit of a transformation. They aren’t as strong as before, are more polished, and seemed to be just regurgitated to fit into the growing emo/scremo scene that Victory is engulfing. But those vocals tend to get slightly annoying after a while, and Wil’s are no different. Luckily, he has the support of gang vocals to bring it back up to pace when he falls behind a bit.

It’s clear that they do have some great talent, and they have a few good songs on here, which is why the album gets a pretty good score. They just seem to be following the crowd too much whereas their debut put them ahead of the crowd beforehand. And in all honesty, if I hadn’t really liked Our Gang’s Dark Oath, then chances are I would’ve just passed over Nightmare Anatomy. It isn’t a horrible album, and will probably sell well, it’s just that they could’ve done so much better than they did.