The World Alive – Empire

My first reaction when I saw The World Alive‘s EP, Empire, was “this is on Fearless?” The artwork didn’t look at all like anything Fearless ever puts out, pointing more towards recent Victory Recordsreleases than anything else. The crumbling, dirty ruins of a the Roman Empire graced the front and it looked more like a hardcore release than a pop-emo one. I grabbed the CD to throw it in and then theFearless look came back with a press pic of the band staring back at me from the CD case. A full band sporting perfectly controlled messes of swooping hair. I was unsure of what to expect and threw it in to solve the mystery.

The answer to my conundrum fell somewhere in between, just leaning much more towards the former than the latter.

The six song EP kicks off with a building guitar riff, before a low, guttural scream comes overtop of a lightning fast double bass-drum kick. It was a hardcore album, that’s for sure; but then mere seconds later the singing vocals came in crushing all ideas of what the album would sound like.

Musically, they’re impressive as hell. While not my style per say, there’s definite talent hidden within The World Alive. Heavy, fast and filled with impressive guitar work alongside thunderous double bass drums,Empire is a metalcore/hardcore album reminiscent of acts like Killswitch Engage or Victory Records act like Darkest Hour and Ringworm. The guttural screams are powerful and fit the reverberating pounding behind him, but where The World Alive goes wrong is when they pull in the singing vocals.

Sounding like a higher pitched version of Geoff Rickly from Thursday, the singing vocals don’t fit the style of music and pull the EP back a notch. It sounds like Devil Wears Prada with less spastic vocals or a much heavier version of Silverstein and doesn’t carry the same impact as it would have had they kept it all heavy. Whoever has the low growls has a strong set of pipes, better than a lot of bands out there but unfortunately they mix them in with the singing vocals all too often which results in a seemingly more flattened experience.

Despite metalcore and hardcore not being my style, it’s hard to deny that The World Alive are very technically skilled. Their musicianship is impressive and at only six songs, the EP is quite bearable. The biggest detractor is the melodic vocals; still, metalcore fans will probably still enjoy it.