Nights Like These The Faithless

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Reviewed by: Michael Gluck   //   Published: 9/14/2006

Whoever is responsible for signing new metalcore bands to Victory Records is probably skirting the once mandatory task of scouring venues across the country (or globe, as we can't forget who broke Refused ten years ago) in favor of clicking away at the friend lists of MySpace Music pages. I can't fathom any other way this Memphis group of monotonous amateurs could have been discovered. A quick (or lengthy, depending on your personal attraction to emotional, middle-America toughies) glance at the band photo tells it all: Five well-fed Tennessee boys were signed to a recording contract because they look good. That comment is sure to ruffle some feathers. Let me guess, I shouldn't pay attention to what Nights Like These look like; I should instead simply "man-up" and review the music. Well then, read on to find out what Nights Like These have to offer on The Faithless.

They have nothing to offer. Even to a new kid with a devil lock whose first concert was this year's Sounds Of The Underground, The Faithless carries little to fool even the most uninitiated of emo/metal/hardcore debutant(e)s. Song titles like "Storming Valhalla" and "Eternal Tempest" provide false illusion that the music on The Faithless is at all revolutionary or even inspiring to the smallest degree. They sound like a bobo hybrid of Glass Casket, Saosin, and Between The Buried And Me trying to play it extremely safe. When "Scavenger's Daughter" starts off with a blast beat and black metal harmony before breaking into nu-metal bounce, then E-crunch, and ending up at a pseudo-emotional break accompanied by gang chants of "we are The Faithless, we are The Faithless!" all before the song hits the one-and-a-half minute mark, it becomes clear that Nights Like These are trying to make all the right moves in order to be accepted by a genre that expects dissonant guitars, regular time changes, and hasty song progressions. But all they are is an amateur and even premature band of average (at best) musicians dealing in insipid emo math mosh, and propped up on a pedestal by the one label ever in search of the next big thing, in every sub-genre of hardcore and metal.

While spewing forth the endless stream of rehashed mediocrity that is The Faithless, the band even manages to incorporate a partial Sabbath riff in "Ghost Town Rituals," to no great effect. I swear, those twangy Sabbath/Zeppelin-type parts are becoming the new breakdown.

Bottom Line: While Andreas Magnusson's production helped The Black Dahlia Murder's Miasma sound like a better album than it actually was, it does the opposite for Nights Like These. Any sense of honesty is completely stripped away by the sterile over-production; a band this young should not be spoiled with a perfect recording their first time around. If they had the chops and the songs then perhaps an exception would be in order, but Nights Like These have neither. The title of track nine pretty much sums where this band is headed.

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