Remove the Veil – Another Way Home

At the current moment I’m somewhat suffering from writers block, so instead of doing a poor job describing this band and making a fool out of myself, I’ll just use a clip from the bands description off their profile on Facedown. “Since forming in early 2005, Remove the Veil has been on an unstoppable mission to spread the word about their unique brand of hard-rocking, loud and fast southern metal.” Beyond that, I’m not really sure what else to say.

The band is comprised of quite capable musicians, there are some fancy guitars solos scattered throughout songs, the fourth track features a beat with a cowbell; possibly one of the greatest additions one can make to a drum kit. The vocals are okay, it’s kind of a raspy scream; I don’t really know what to compare it to. When I first heard the vocals I thought they were reminiscent of the screams from Alexisonfire; it immediately occurred to me moments later that I don’t listen to Alexisonfire. In lieu of my previous realization, one should probably not take to heart Remove the Veil sounding anything like Alexisonfire. I generally don’t have a lot of experience dealing with this whole “southern metal” thing. I’ve heard a few Every Time I Die songs and I used to like Norma Jean (who from what I’ve heard is also “southern metal”), but then I realized that all of their songs had already been done by Botch (who had also done a better job). But I digress, the ultimate point I was getting at is that since I don’t listen to southern metal, identifying with this album is difficult, leading me to my next point:

I’m most likely not going to listen to this very much in the future. There’s that chance that it might grow on me, but I’m going to go right ahead and assume that it won’t. I was happy that this album lacked any terrible screechy singing one would expect to find in the genre widely accepted as “screamo.” Alternately, I don’t know if they’ve really got a unique brand of hard-rocking southern metal going for them. I generally don’t have many complaints in the way of this CD, although the second last song kind of reminded me of a Nickelback-Bon Jovi amalgamation, and I could have done without that. I suppose I could pin the blame for that on their attempt at singing (which is by all rights decent, just miles away from my musical preference).

All in all, this album is tolerable; and coming from me, a person who has absolutely no interest in southern metal (that’s not completely true, I don’t mind Pantera), that’s saying something. So, if you get a chubby (or the female equivalent to a chubby; I don’t want to start excluding genders) whenever you hear southern metal-hardcore-rock bands, perhaps this music is for you. Check them out.