Kingston Falls – Armada On Mercury

As I brace myself to get into this cd review I’d like to say that writing about “metalcore” is always difficult. It’s expanded into multiple facets and seems to appear in so many different forms that I’m left at a loss to explain it. Kingston Falls and a lot of the other Facedown records bands seem to slowly closing the gap between metalcore and metal though. The genre has sure come a long ways since the early days ofIntegrity and Unbroken. But I digress. I feel obliged to write about this band as if it were two separate entities; the people playing instruments and the vocals.

Musically, this band is talented (they sound quite a bit like War of Ages). A lot of the songs have large portions dedicated to guitar solos and melodic parts which are enjoyable to listen to and catchy. Brutal breakdowns and guitars tuned so low that you can hear the strings rattling against each other on the recordings are generally lacking. The drums sound great; it’s not exactly an instrument I’m that experienced in, but I know I like a tight bass drum and poppy snare (both of which they have). The bass is kind of indecipherable due to the leads, bass drum, and vocals taking predominance over everything else. Nonetheless, the band sounds really good; it’s more or less on par with your average metal band. Now, if I may, it’s time to move onto what I wasn’t fond of.

I hate Kingston Falls’ vocals. I had to get through the CD completely ignoring them; it was the only way to not despise myself for ever deciding to review CD’s. I cannot stand the “heavy vocals-contrasted-with-singing” deal that so many bands have incorporated into their music; alleged “melodic” vocals. There are thousands of examples floating around right now of what I mean and from what I gather, it’s all the rage. Perfectly good bands are ruining songs with it and it should be making me lose sleep at night. Anyways, I’m not particularly fond of the “heavy vocals” either (I was going to say they’re reminiscent of theTaste of Chaos tour bands, but I realized such a low blow was surely not deserving). I’m not really sure what it reminds me of, probably Means, since that’s usually the band that I allow to encompass this genre for me. So if you like Means, you’ll probably like this.

Kingston Falls isn’t really reinventing the genre nor doing anything utterly fantastic. The music falls prey to the ever-trendy singing-screaming thing but is laden with instrumentally pleasing music; so I’m conflicted. I can say with some confidence that this will probably receive a certain amount of neglect from me, being that I’m not really into this kind of music. But who cares about my opinion, right? Check outKingston Falls, you may… fall for them.