Arise and Ruin The Final Dawn

Heavy music is a genre defined by extremes, and there seems to be an inborn preoccupation with how technical a band can get, how "br00tal," how inventive, how noisy. Especially when it comes to the more technical music, this can lead to albums populated with bloated wankfests rather than actual songs. Guelph, Ontario's Arise and Ruin attempt to sidestep this pitfall on their debut by melding quick and fast hardcore song structures with Gothenburg thrash. Yeah. This is the first time in a long time that the combination of metal and hardcore didn't sound like a bunch of overused conventions stretched to the point of absurdity. Almost. On every track, Arise and Ruin come out the gates frothing, delivering some plain and nasty thrash. On a longer album, this would quickly become tiresome. They mix it up enough with lockstep drumming and some variation in the guitar harmonies that the tracks are generally discernable from one another. The songs are kept short, most of them barely breaking the three-minute mark, which allows the band to avoid the banal Gothenburg epics that never seem to know when to end. The Final Dawn's most glaring flaw is the addition of a chugging breakdown to nearly every track. In light of the technical abilities displayed in the first half of the songs, these parts feel completely tacked on to let the scenesters have a little dance. Even with concise songs that have a tendency to rely on horribly stale breakdowns, Arise and Ruin are still able to have a song sound epic without droning on for nine minutes. "Pale Horse" starts off at a trot and quickly escalates into some mammoth guitar work without sounding rushed, and truly stands out. Unfortunately, at the 2:30 mark, the track morphs into a chugging yawnfest to cap things off. If the band were to cut about five minutes from the collective breakdowns on the album, they'd have a wholly impressive first effort. As it stands, though, the tracks too quickly slide into mediocrity after a couple minutes of awesome. Bottom Line: I have to give it up to Arise and Ruin for creating a metalcore album that didn't bore me to tears. Anyone able to get past the chugga-chugga deedle-deedle breakdowns will likely find something to enjoy here. The songs sometimes sound too similar, but that seems to be more a matter of compression. These guys wanted to get in, shred and get out, and they definitely succeeded.