The title ‘Beauty and the Breakdown’ got me interested. Are we talking about pretty girls who are surgically broken down by some illegal donor crime syndicate? Girls who have mental issues? Girls who are getting beaten because they aren’t obedient to their boyfriends or husbands? Or is it a lot of angry music with breakdowns? I’m up for all of them!

 

Opener “House of Straw” sets the tone perfectly. Massive chugga-chugga riffs, hardcore type vocals and a nice metal influence here and there. So far so good but nothing that bends or breaks the rules for this successful genre. But it are tracks like “Twelfth Stroke Of Midnight” that have a Meshuggah vibe to them because of the slightly over-the-bar phrasing of the guitar riff; giving it a really pushing feel to it. These kind of things are there throughout the disc, elevating the music out of the cookie-cutter-core category and into the “hey this sounds damn good” section.

 

It is rare when a band like this manages to write a cd full of songs, each of them being fairly standard but well written. It’s like going to a strange restaurant and order a nice steak. No matter where you go, decent steak is always nice. That pretty much sums up my opinion on this record: Don’t suspect any creativity, but look into this if you want solid “metalcore” that is better than the rest of the flock of bands. Easily up there with the latest offerings from Hatebreed and Terror so you should know enough.