Like Moths To Flames – When We Don’t Exist

A couple years back I was caught off guard when I took a liking to metalcore band Memphis May Fire.  Up until then I thought maybe I just didn’t get the dissonance heavy genre, but the album gave me a little hope.  Fast forward a couple of years though, and my interest seems to have been a one-off, because I still can’t seem to find any respite in the alternatives.

This review could apply to any number of bands, but it just so happens that I’ve been listening around Like Moths To Flames on my review playlists for a while now, so I think it’s high time I purged it from the back of my mind.  In a single word, the Columbus, Ohio group’s sophomore effort, When We Don’t Exist, is generic.  The band piggybacks off of just about every other metalcore release to come from Rise Records over the past few years.  If like me you’ve thought very little of (or completely ignored) bands like The Color Morale or The Plot In You, then you can add Like Moths To Flames to that list and tune out now.

Subscribing to a methodology of uninspired formulaic repetition, When We Don’t Exist contains few attempts at originality.  Every song can be boiled down to a predictably cycled, breakdown heavy chorus-verse template that grows tiresome even during preliminary listens.  Songs like “No Hope,” “You Won’t Be Missed,” and “Trophy Child” (really, I could have picked anything on the CD) swing like a pendulum between throaty dissonance and fractured chords so expectedly that there’s very little to comment on.  Compounding matters, Like Moths To Flames tries their hand at vague accessibility with stints of overproduced, ineffectual clean vocals.  Many of these songs are mediocre at their truest but completely devoid of individuality.  There’s little question about it, if it were 2005 these guys would signed with Trustkill Records (not a compliment).

As for lyrics, if metalcore is your thing, then I’d recommend tuning out any particular words in hopes that you can find some sort of refuge in the overarching sounds.  If by chance you can make out some words, everything sounds vague and melodramatic: “Darkness…” something something “…hate,” big screams, and opened ended questions like “can you feel the darkness growing inside” (passage lifted from “Real Talk”) merely occupy space with uninspired filler.  I don’t have a lyric booklet to speak of, and I’d very much like to keep it that way.

Like Moths To Flames exists in its own little world, where metalcore is devoid of originality and artists seem to be fine with that.  Thankfully it seems that Rise Records has turned the light on in its dark little corner with recent signings like Hot Water Music, Transit, and Make Do And Mend, and will dilute the thick flood of the status quo with healthy waters of diverse life.  In other words, there’s little need to do little more than just pass When We Don’t Exist on by and wait for something better.