Nodes of Ranvier – Defined By Struggle

The moment I saw that this band was on Victory Records I just assumed that this would be another metal core band. Its always depressing to prove your assumptions right.

Not that I have anything against metal core, I only have a problem with unoriginal metal core and that’s what Nodes of Ranvier is. Their latest release, Defined by Struggle, is not to painful to listen to, but after the music fades away and only silence remains, there was no strong urge to repeat it. There are many more bands I would rather listen to within the metal core genre who bring something different to the genre, instead of riding on the coat tails of other bands sound.

While some songs on the album do stand out such as Endless Faith, which in itself is not a groundbreaking song, other songs such as Purpose in Pain made me reach for the volume knob to turn it off. The song was an endless medley of constant double kick, coupled with bland gang vocals and the dreaded melodic signing. Now many people at this point in my review must be asking, is double kick not sweet? In theory it is, if the drummer could do sweet patterns, but when the only thing the drummer can do is maintain one constant beat through the entire song it takes away from the overall effect. As for melodic signing, it seems that in order to sign on to victory all bands must guarantee a certain percentage of melodic vocals which take any credibility the song may have had and crush it. Honestly, mixing heavy vocals with melodic vocals does not improve a song, it just confuses the song. Any momentum that had previously existed before the melodic vocals kicked in were washed aside and instantly my stomach turned for the worse.

The guitar work is decent, though not original in any way. They attempt to throw in solos to legitimize their claims to metal. Unfortunately the solos, like the rest of the album, are nothing special. Had the band spent more time writing their songs I am sure they could have created something wonderful and unique. Instead they released an album which you could have sworn you had heard before. So save your money for something better, like Trial.