I’ve made no bones about the fact that I’m not a huge fan of A Plea For Purging‘s shift from awesome, twiddly shreddy metalcore to more serious, personal djent styled music. I have not really cared for the band since 2009’s Depravity, and frankly haven’t really cared to, as in my opinion nothing will top A Critique of Mind and Thought.
Those expecting me to say ‘until now’, sorry. The Life & Death of A Plea For Purging, like its predecessor The Marriage of Heaven & Hell does nothing for me, and with an even more commercial lean to the already pretty bland back bone of mid paced chugging riffs, A Plea For Purging, like label mates War of Ages are a once promising band that have simply fallen into more mainstream, if still deeply Christian territory.
With all the great Christian metal that Facedown releases, A Plea For Purging just comes across as the most cookie cutter. And while the album, (as with all Christian albums) is deeply personal and no doubt directed at the faith filled masses looking for some musical guidance to go along with their spiritual needs, the music that A Plea For Purging now deliver is no more than a slew of slightly angular, staggering mid paced hardcore riffs and roars laced with lots of clean vocals, acoustic interludes and ‘introspective’ moments. And as an atheist, I don’t really absorb the lyrical themes, but as a critic look for ‘something’ to move me or waver my atheism as bands like Hands or A Hope For Home do or beat me into like Saving Grace or Impending Doom. A Plea For Purging do neither and waffle around in middle ground.
As with the last 2 records, the album has a certain somber atmosphere, but nothing that put a lump in my throat like Depravity‘s title track. Of the 14 tracks and around 50 drawn out minutes or so, 5 are some sort of clean segue, ballad or acoustic interlude (“The Setting Sun”, “Hands and Feet”, “Skin & Bones”,”Hell at Our Backs”, “Miss Fortune”), that come across as dreary rather than the intended ‘progressive’ tag. The others consist chugging, lurching riffs that bridge into some (usually clean sung) chorus or pre chorus that are flat out dull. And I’d be OK if the heavy moments were heavy, but when the likes of “Room for the Dead” and “My Song” are the band’s heaviest cuts, you’d be better off listening to a Mudvayne Record to get your fix of heavy. The attempt at djent -ish lurches are not even close to even the genre’s softer acts like Textures or Tesseract. Heck. if your djent has to be Christian, just listen to In the Midst Of Lions– as repetitive and predictable as they have become, at least they bring the beef.
At least Facedown has some other acts to step in and deliver music that matches the message in the Leaders, Your Memorial and The Burial’s upcoming releases.
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Yeah, I think I kinda agree with you on this one. Although I will say I thought their last two albums were pretty good, what I heard from this one left me cold. It’s weird to me that they are trying to put more “acoustic” based stuff and clean singing in their sound, as I just didn’t think they were that kind of band.
They did one completely clean vocal song on their last album and I will say it is really good, just not on that album. It almost reminded me of Porcupine Tree in a weird way (mainly the vocal sound I guess).
Oh well, good call on the Your Memorial, I loved “Atonement” and can’t wait to hear new stuff from them. Is the Leaders album good? I heard one song and it was okay, but pretty typical tough guy semi-djenty sounding hardcore.
The Burial sounds pretty sick tho, I’ll be getting that.
on Feb 8th, 2012 at 11:31