Hand To Hand resides from the sunshine state and has just released their third album called Design The End / Follow The Horizon. Being not quite optimistic about their previous work I’m very curious if this album can pull me over the line. Let’s find out.

 

The emo / screamocore of these guys is not something I’m very fond of. The reason for this is quite simple. Most of these bands are rather irritating to me than entertaining. Why is that? Very simple, a lot of bands that I’ve heard over the years are putting so much riffs and screams in the songs that I'm starting to doubt them if they're not just making a lot of noise rather than writing a song. Add to this that most of the lyrics are, even with the lyrics in front of you, very hard to follow. This, of course, apart from the melodramatic parts within the songs. Those parts are rather annoying since most of the vocalists are mostly out of tune.

 

Luckily enough this album doesn’t live up to the expectations I have on most of those bands. The lyrics are rather understandable and even within the melodic parts the vocalist shows he really can sing. In the songs there’s enough room for the riffs that are carrying the song along with the drums. So far so good you might think!

 

Well, I guess you’re wrong. Why? Because the songs are rather predictable and not entertaining me at all. I constantly have the feeling I’ve heard this a thousand times before during all those “cross my heart and hope to die” bands. Sure Hand To Hand does show some attempts of being original but they all fail miserably. Especially the bonus track that starts 10 minutes after the last song exists of some lifetime loser doing some lame raps. I guess that was funny 15 years ago.