Society's Finest And I, The Drunkards

From what I can gather, Society's Finest has been around the metalcore scene for eight years, although until now I have never had the chance to give them a listen. With their latest full-length, And I, The Drunkards, Society's Finest displays an aptitude for writing competent heavy music with few downfalls. Yet, from a different angle, I could just as easily say that this album doesn't have a lot of truly impressive parts either. Society's Finest's take on the metalcore genre is composed of the standard fast metallic riffing, complemented by a plethora of breakdowns, all tied together by melodic rock passages. While their style isn't even close to bringing any new ideas or sounds to the scene, these guys do pull it off well. I would even go as far to say that when this disc is at its fastest and heaviest parts, I tend to enjoy it. But after six or seven tracks, I found my interest waning, as it became difficult to pay attention to the latter half of the album. Even though the songs on the second half of the CD tended to have more memorable and melodic aspects, such as the calm interlude in the middle of "Fourth Floor Corpse" and the instrumental track "Untitled," this diversity wasn't enough to save the album from my dwindling interest. Vocalist Joshua Ashworth, known for his touring with Zao in 2003, provides both screaming and singing on the record. While I enjoy the screams, I find the singing to be a bit lethargic. I do applaud Society's Finest for choosing not to include catchy clean choruses on the album, but where there is singing, it tends to just drag on and on, much like the clean vocals on the latest Scarlet album. Soon after listening, I then discovered that And I, The Drunkards was produced by Scarlet's drummer, Andreas Magnusson, thus making the comparison not so coincidental. In fact, the final track, "Deadlightstranger," could easily be mistaken for a slower paced Scarlet song, complete with the aforementioned lethargic singing, electronic sounding drums, and background screaming. As for the overall production, I have neither complaints nor praises. It's semi-polished, but not nauseatingly so, and it simply gets the job done. Bottom Line: There is no doubt in my mind that past listeners of Society's Finest will accept this album with arms wide open, but there just isn't enough appeal to this album to draw me in. This album is pretty damn average.