Story Of The Year – The Constant

In late 2003, post-hardcore was the in-thing in the punk rock scene.  New bands were coming out left, right and center and bringing with them a wave of agitated music that merged together classic punk and hardcore elements with a slightly melodic tinge. Labels picked up any band that sounded remotely similar to them and promoted the hell out of them, hoping that eventually one of them will hit and make it big.

Story of The Year were one of those bands that made it big; not because of luck, but because there was something inherently good with their breakout album Page Avenue. Dan Marsala’s vocals stood out in the crowd, switching from passionate screams to more melodic singing with ease. Their musicianship was tight and their live show was fantastic – and ever since then, they’ve been trying to recapture that status with each release and always falling a bit short.

Their follow-up, In The Wake of Determination, was a flop and while their Epitaph debut The Black Swan showed a definite improvement – Story of The Year still weren’t able to return to that plateau of success.  Now we’re given their fourth album and second Epitaph release, The Constant and with it we get the exact album that we knew we’d get – whether that’s good or bad is up to you to decide.

The Constant is an incredibly solid punk-rock/post-hardcore amalgamation that hits all the right spots for an energizing listen but fails to stay all that memorable. Marsala’s vocals are still strong – whether he’s giving a more rock-oriented (think Jared Leto from Thirty Seconds to Mars) in I’m Alive or grabbing the mic with both hands to let go a blistering guttural scream like on To The Burial.  The band mixes it up just as much, offering more radio-friendly rock tracks like The Dream Is Over along with some straight out, balls-to-the-walls hardcore songs like the frantic closer Eye for An Eye; and while both styles fit with the Story of The Year sound –  it’s hard to ignore some of the hooks that the band has put out here –  you can’t help but think that they’d be better off if they left the rock tracks behind them.

The rock songs are good in their own right – hell, the bridge in Ten Years Down becomes one of the highlight of the album, just squashed between an otherwise forgettable track – they’re just nothing special when compared to what else is out there. When they pull it back, make it a bit less accessible to the general public and truly accept their hardcore roots is when The Constant shines. The barrelling drumming along with old-school Davey Havoc-like vocals bring the two minute Eye For An Eye to a new level of energy undiscovered in their more radio-friendly tracks like Time Goes On.  The guitar solo rips throughTo The Burial and the gang-vocals chorus would create pile-ons like nobody’s business at a concert.

Like most Story Of The Year releases, The Constant works as a solid offering that doesn’t quite live it to Page Avenue but shows that if they stripped back the post in their “post-hardcore” style and went straight out hardcore than they’d finally be stepping out of the shadow of their breakthrough release. It’s good, just not always all that memorable.