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Last week was a big, big sales week for new metal releases, I’d imagine one of the highest cumulative tallies of the year so far. The #1 through #6 entries on the Top Hard Music charts could all be considered smashes in today’s relative terms, with Dream Theater, Anthrax and others making big splashes. Arch/Matheos, Vader and Wolves in the Throne Room also had nice debuts. Let’s look at the numbers:
Damn. After a few slow weeks of new releases, we have a ton of new stuff coming out this week, including new stuff from Anthrax, Dream Theater, Wolves in the Throne Room, Haste the Day, Vader, Primus and my personal favorite, Elks, plus many more. We have officially entered the fall new release season!
We’re shuttering the Mansion gates early today for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving holiday, ’cause let’s face it: you’ve all gone home already and have long since put up your “I am out of the office. If it’s urgent, call my cell phone” auto-responders. Please, people: no one cares about you. Get over it!
Here’s what happened in this abbreviated week while might or might not have been checking your Blackberries:
We’ll be stuffing our faces full of food and booze tomorrow and recovering all day Friday. See ya Monday!
-VN
Yesterday’s news that Haste the Day have kicked the bucket seemed perfectly times with a post that those fine madams at Reign in Blonde dropped over the weekend: “Songs I Like By Bands I Don’t.” I share my fellow Mansion inhabitant Axl’s viewpoint that Haste the Day’s demise isn’t worth shedding any tears over, but they did have this one song — one song — that I really dig. It’s the self-titled opening track from 2007′s Pressure the Hinges:
More than anything it’s that opening guitar riff that gets me — the swagger, the groove — while the rest of the song, kinda like the band, is interchangeable with any average or slightly-above-average metalcore released in 2007. But man, that riff! That riff.
I could go on about songs I like by bands that I don’t, but I’ll leave that to you guys; is there a band you can’t stand except for one slammin’ song that gets ya in that special spot?
-VN
Haste the Day are calling it a, uh, day. I was never a fan of the band, who I think were a slightly-above-average “verb the noun” metalcore group. (In fact, the last time I even mentioned them, it was when another “verb the noun” band, Destroy the Runner, broke up.) But I know this news will make someone sad. I don’t know who that someone is, and given the number of e-mails we’ve gotten about the split (one), I don’t think that that someone even reads our site, but he or she is out there somewhere.
From the “buh-bye” post on HTD’s official website:
I can’t keep all these fucking bands straight. Destroy the Runner and Haste the Day and Escape the Fate and Salt the Wound and blessthefall and Bleed the Sky and Scatter the Ashes and Clone the Fragile and Pierce the Veil and Remove the Veil and Kiss the Ass and every other “verb the noun” band – holy shit, guys, you gotta start coming up with names that will allow potheads like me to more easily distinguish you from one another. ‘Cause your music certainly ain’t doing the trick.
Although I do like Protest the Hero. And Poison the Well. And Swallow the Sun. So I guess there are exceptions to every rule. But still.
Wait… how did I get on this rant again?
Oh, yeah, Destroy the Runner.
So anyway, they broke up.
-AR
While I can appreciate some good metalcore, the more poppy side of the subgenre grates on me considerably. I’m also not a Christian, not by any stretch of the imagination. But Haste The Day dig Jesus quite a bit — not that there’s anything wrong with that — and the songs on their new album Dreamer follow the predictable pop-metalcore format (screaming verses followed by a catchy, sing-song chorus interrupted by a chugging breakdown and closing out with more EMOtive singing). Suffice it to say, Dreamer is not for me.
I’m not really a fan of Haste the Day, Christian music, or Christian metalcore — but I have to hand it to Haste the Day for writing one of the tastiest riffs metalcore has ever seen (“Pressure the Hinges,” off the album of the same name). It was of interest to me, then, when MetalSucks Maniac Matteo Boxy alerted us to the fact that the band has a new song called “68″ up on their MySpace.
As far as “metalcore by numbers” goes, Haste the Day is pretty much Exhibit A (and Christian metalcore, to boot!). But who the fuck cares when you’ve got riffs as irresistible as the main riff in this song? Well actually, that’s kind of the only redeeming quality of this album, and I kind of want to stick pins in my ears when they start clean singing, but that opening riff… damn!
Haste the Day – “Pressure the Hinges”
-VN
