Inked In Blood – Sometimes We Are Beautiful

A couple years ago I was going on a new music binge (that’s where I attempt to find new bands to listen to and search for several hours at a time) and I chanced upon this band. I liked what I heard and I’m pretty sure I downloaded a couple of their songs off purevolume or something, but eventually I lost interest. So a few years passed and I didn’t really give Inked In Blood much thought, that is up until a few months ago when I saw they were poised to release a new album on Facedown. I was intrigued and just assumed that I would somehow eventually come by it.

Sure enough, here I am with Inked In Blood’s “Sometimes We Are Beautiful” and to be completely honest, I would have preferred to remain ignorant to their choices of musical direction. Of course I’m getting ahead of myself; Inked In Blood was a fairly decent metal group from what I had heard a couple years ago. They had some great instrumentation and the vocalist sounded good. With this new CD, they retained the instrumental music and the vocalist still sounds good, but they added another vocalist. If you are “down with new music” and aware of the direction it has been taking recently, this should be no surprise; this new vocalist is a singer (that is he sings, not shout, scream, wail, etc.)

If you happen to be familiar with the band Means (another Facedown band that, if I understand correctly, the entire Edmonton music scene would give their lives to keep around forever), Inked In Blood is more or less doing the same thing as them. Heavy-ish music layered with parts appropriate for some guy with a high-pitched voice to sing along to. This formula, which happens to be repeated more times than I’d like, leads to pain when it hits my ears. I utterly despise the whole “sing along to the heavy, morbid themed music in an obnoxiously whiny voice” trend. I was so confident that it was dying out too! I’ll never get my hopes up again…

Being that I am more or less a jerk, perhaps I’m over-blowing how much I really disliked this album. As I said earlier, they sound very similar to Means and every time someone brings up that band, a dozen people descend upon the conversation to profess their absolute love of Means (I don’t think that actually happens). This leads me to believe that this album will be welcomed and embraced with open arms. If you happen to hate the singing that I speak of (the whole “melodic” thing), stay clear of Inked In Blood, it will most likely be very disappointing. Now, if I may, I’m going to go completely change my appearance so groups of angry Means fans won’t be able to lynch me for speaking ill of their favorite band.