Apparently, the sweep arpeggio is the new breakdown.  Arguably thanks to Between the Buried and Me and since successfully cloned by the likes of The Human Abstract, All Shall Perish, Protest the Hero, Veil of Maya and With Passion, here comes the second wave of kids trying their hand and deathcore/hardcore/metalcore meets arpeggios.

Whereas the recent efforts by A Plea For Purging, A Thousand Times Repent, Embrace the End and Fate seemed to do deathcore with flare well, Christian rumblers For Today seem to just be trying to hard to mix arpeggios with crumbling deathcore and angular Meshuggah-isms, all wrapped up in a rather trite sense of preachiness.

While an OK album, Ekklesia is just too directionless and jammed full of influences to stick. After the expected opening breakdown of “Intro” (do all deathcore bands do this now?), the band goes from lurching but spindly, angular deathcore (“Infantry”, “Agape”, laughable lyrics of “Ready For the Fight”), to soaring layered, Life In Your Way/Misery Signals styled metal core (“Redemption”, “Never Lose Sight of Your Goals”, “Words of Hope”), all done with the expected deep (forced sounding) death metal roars, gang chants, tear filled clean croons, acoustics (“Instrumental”) and seemingly random, intermittent arpeggios littering every song. It could not be more cookie cutter if it tried.

Like I said, it’s not too bad, it’s just the band really needs to slow down, take a breath and let their influences breathe a bit. It’s not helped by the fact that this is one of Jamie King’s weaker, more hollow and robotic productions I’ve heard. The arpeggios themselves are decent as both guitarists are skilled, boding well for the future should the band settle down, but now they are simple window dressing to rather contrived elements and lyrics. The result is a few nice solos  (i.e. “A Higher Standard”) scattered around a rather average album, that seems forced and cloned from the leftovers of other bands. Though they try, it’s never as heavy as the likes of With Blood Comes Cleansing and never as gracefully uplifting and competent as their other labelmates/Christian metalcore peers (Inked In Blood, War of Ages,  Kingston Falls, Means, etc), just this musical limbo that tries to be both and stumbles.

A huge step back for Facedown from the recent Kingston Falls release and a release that only real die hards of the current explosion should take a chance on as there are simply better options of this style out there right now and in the near future.

[Visit the band's website]

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