Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children

Every decade seems to bring approaches within the realm of heavy metal that serve as the blueprint for countless other bands to follow. And in the early 21st century, it was certainly angry/hollered vocals, pissed-off lyrics, and chug-chug-chug...chug-chug-chug guitar riffing -- as well as bands that opted to hide their identities behind scary masks. And all of these aforementioned ingredients have been well represented in the work of , who continue to specialize in these approaches on their 2010 release, . You can certainly make a valid claim that are too derivative of bands such as and (although with the latter, there has been some debate regarding who "borrowed" from whom... or ), but have carved a niche for themselves within the "masked metal" genre. And on , you get just what you'd expect -- songs that serve as a checklist of the aforementioned musical descriptions (the album-opening plus etc.). Elsewhere, you'll find the melodic which is an obvious attempt at radio acceptance (a la ), as well as two tracks that turn out to be more tranquil/slow-building, and the album-closing If musicians wearing masks and freely expressing their anger gets your head banging, then should provide a suitable soundtrack. But for something a little more original and not as same-sounding as 's competition, you'll probably want to look elsewhere. ~ Greg Prato