Review: August Burns Red Presents: Sleddin' Hill

I tried.

As many of you know, I don't like Christmas music. Last year, I was blown away by Trevor Gordon Hall's Christmas album. I listened to it for probably about 2 months straight and still occasionally listen to it, nowhere close to Christmas time. It's better than that good. This year, I figured I'd give another Christmas album a  try. So I pre-ordered August Burns Red's, Sleddin' Hill.

I'm a long time ABR fan. My first show was their first show with Josh McManness, where Jon Hershey came out for one final song with the band. Since then, I've seen them at a number of different venues, probably numbering about 15 total shows. I'm even in their live DVD, Home.

So I wanted to like this. Leveler, out in 2011, was a pretty solid album. It showed progression. Still hard to stand up next to Thrill Seeker, but progression nonetheless. And that's what I wanted - something fresh and interesting.

And I got Christmas music.

I listened to this for weeks; it sat in my cars CD player as  I searched for something redemptive. At the end of every ride, however, I was left incredibly disappointed.

I think a few things played into this:

• JB Brubaker has cited the album as showing a lot more punk influence than the typical ABR. Honestly, though, there is no discernible punk influence in any other ABR, so it doesn't tie well into the rest of their catalog. If they truely do enjoy punk, I get it, but I'm not a huge punk fan, so this did not sit well with me.
• If you're going to do a punk album, make it punk. That means raw, unadulturated music. It doesn't have to sound like it has been recorded from a dilapidated garage on cheap guitars and cheap distortion pedals; mainly, it just needs to sound like you're seeing it live. This album, however, sounds sterile and over-produced. And compressed. Oh, how I loathe over-compression.
• It's uncreative. The few originals they had are pretty solid tracks. They're inventive. The rest of the album is Christmas music. In order to succeed with a cover so vastly overdone, you have to reinvent the song; it can't just sound like frosty the snowman on speed.
• The only vocals are on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It's in a punk-esque way, but just doesn't make me think ABR. They would have done better without. Either that, or I really wanted to hear some screaming through the whole album... That would be ABR.

Like I said, I'm unimpressed.

I wrote 90% of this review before Christmas. I didn't publish it until now, because I didn't want people to subject themselves to this prior to Christmas. I won't even link to it.

Now that Christmas is over, forget that ABR even did a Christmas album. Take a trip back in time and listen to Thrill Seeker.

Old Show Review: August Burns Red w/Bless the Fall, Enter Shikari, and iwrestledabearonce

Right now, I'm sitting in my living room watching August Burns Red's newest album/DVD release, Home. The live album/DVD was shot at Warehouse 54 (Manheim BIC church), only like 20 minutes from my house. Naturally, I was there and can even be seen in the pit, crowdsurfing, and being interviewed at the end. It was truly one of the best hardcore shows I've ever been to. However, at least at the moment, I don't have time to review that show. Instead I'm going to post a review of another show of theirs I had seen. It's from July of 2009, right before the official release of their album, Constellations.






August Burns Red w/Bless The Fall, Enter Shikari, and iwrestledabearonce

If you’re ever having a bad day, week, month, or entire summer, then you’re clearly in need of a good hardcore show. To say this show was good, however, is like saying that the sun is warm - it’s a gross understatement. This was one of the best hardcore shows I’ve ever seen, and I was once one of those kids who went to a show each week, so I’ve seen quite a few.

The show started off with this band, iwrestledabearonce. Having never heard them before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. When a girl stepped on stage, I figured it’d either be something absolutely terrible, or something along the liens of Flee the Seen, being not nearly as heavy as ABR. So yeah, I was pretty wrong about that one. Frontwoman Krysta Cameron is brutal. She did all of the vocals, ranging from a death metal growl that would make small children cry to singing both very powerful melodies to extremely timid ones. She would switch back and forth on the slightest whim as well. Now being a guitarist, you’ve gotta do a good job at wowing me instrumentally as well. Not only did iwrestledabearonce have some crazy vocals, but they kept things extremely interesting with lots of genre changes, similar to what you’d see with some Between the Buried and Me songs, but slightly more frequent. Basically if I could be in a band, it would be something extremely reminiscent of these guys. I was impressed enough to actually go and buy their CD after the show (perhaps I’ll have a later segment in this blog on my view of piracy, coming from an artist). For the opening act, I don’t know that you can do much better.

With such an incredible first band, I expected to be slightly disappointed by the other two leading up to ABR. However, hailing from the UK, Enter Shikari was yet another wow experience. I really enjoy when people experiment with their music and come up with sounds that you haven’t heard before or, at the very least, don’t hear often. These guys did that with some strange mixture of techno-esque beats and synth sounds with a healthy mix of screaming and singing. It was unique, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was kinda strange at times, when within a single song you couldn’t decide whether you were supposed to be dancing or moshing. Jumping around in a more jovial manner would turn into a pit with the little scene kids and their windmill kicks and whatnot almost instantaneously. It’d also be interesting to note that they have an extremely different sound live than they do on their recorded material. In listening to them online just now, they are much more reserved in their recording. Live they seem to have a lot more raw vocal power than the processed sound of the studio. If I was going to buy a second CD at this show, it would have probably been theirs.

Still waiting for the almost inevitable flop that far too many shows seem to have, the third band, Bless the Fall, took the stage and I took a pessimistic stand. Perhaps I’ve just seen too many really exceptional bands with really unexceptional bands. Though I wasn’t quite as wowed with these guys, they still had a great sound and put on a great show. Their sound was a little bit more commonplace, and not as experimental, but still really solid and thoroughly enjoyable. They were really good, honestly, but at this point in writing this review, I’m just more anxious to get to ABR’s set, so this is getting cut short. Seriously, look all of these guys up online if you’ve never heard of them before.

So then comes the set change for ABR… With such anticipation for what everyone knew would be pure insanity, the set change took forever. I guess a few people couldn’t wait for things to go crazy, so they started a bit early. There were two girls who went into an all-out brawl prior to ABR taking the stage. I saw very little of it, but the few seconds I caught when I turned around to see what the commotion was were pretty intense. ABR finally took the stage shortly thereafter and everyone else got to go crazy. They started out with a few of their new songs, then played a few older ones and continued with a very healthy mix of old and new. Having not listened to the new songs too much, I was less familiar with them, but thoroughly impressed. Usually when a band first goes on tour with a new set list, it takes a while until the new songs are played as well as the old ones, but, as I gave an extremely critical ear to the new material, everything seemed to be dead on. A while back I had read some of the comments on their myspace saying that the new material wasn’t as brutal and whatnot, but it still is very much so, at least live.

Despite it being an amazing show and ABR’s performance being pretty insane, there were a few things that I wasn’t too pleased about. In the midst of playing their new material they announced that they had the new album for sale at the show, even though the release date is the 14th. Sure that’s great and all, but being one of the people who preordered it, I was a little upset to find out that I would have to continue to wait while other people did not. Also, they didn’t play The Seventh Trumpet. If anyone has seen them live, The Seventh Trumpet pretty much redefines epic. It’s probably one of the best songs ever written by a person. To see them and not have that show in their set was troubling. However, I still got my mosh on, got to crowd surf, and saw one of the best lineups ever.

Not from this show, but when they played purple door 2 years ago