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The Always Open Mouth

Fear Before the March of Flames
Equal Vision Records

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Fear Before the March of Flames - The Always Open Mouth There's a desperation in the air. You can hear it in the frantic way every hard-rockin' metal-core, screamo and spazz-tastic band is ratcheting up its game, making things harder, faster and crazier with each successive release. You can see it with the rush of record labels to sign, promote and turn an easy buck on a fad before it sputters to a less than dignified death. You can feel it in the growing ambivalence toward most new bands from all but the most impressionable mall-punk youth.

Denver's Fear Before the March of Flames feed on that desperation. The onetime screamo/metal/post-hardcore outfit reaches its majority with The Always Open Mouth, an album that flips, batters and bruises the band's erstwhile metal and spastic leanings with an ear for pacing, dynamics and depth we've never seen from the rough-and-tumble rockers. Expanding its love for the fast and hard with a new fascination for the slow-and-heavy, the electro-and-quirky and the melodic-and-mysterious, Fear Before graduate from the metal-core ghettoes to play with hard rock's elite.

Where the band's previous efforts were an epileptic fit of adrenaline and attention-deficit disorder, Fear Before the March of Flames tempers its spazz-core roots with a mountain of new directions. Exploring gears other than overdrive, the band makes leaps from the metal-core blueprint to become a card-carrying heavy band able to rely on muscle and heft as much as raw speed and high-RPM riffs. "Drown the Old Hag" slows down the band's manic speeds to normal rock tempos, allowing guitars to stretch out and find some heft to match their sizzling sound. "Ten Seconds in Los Angeles" and "Complete and Utter Confusion ?" are a maze of electronic effects, half-focused samples and smolder-to-blaze guitars that recall everything from The Refused's glory days to The Deftones. "Dog Sized Bird," with clanky programming and the AFI-indebted winter-chill of "My (Fucking) Deer Hunter" embark from the band's punk/metal roots to explore altogether new directions.

Fear Before the March of Flames doesn't totally abandon its roots with The Always Open Mouth. Although "Mouth" lays off the speed-fit tempos, it's essentially a punk-core number at heart, just doped up and slowed down. "A Gift for Fiction" and "A Brief Tutorial in Bachanalia (Cigarettes as Currency)" resurrect the chaotic whirlwind of guitars, screamed vocals and rocket-propelled tempos.

Although Fear Before the March of Flames isn't quite there yet, it's well on its way to becoming its generation's answer to the brainiac metal of band such as Cave In, Neurosis or Isis. Fear Before's still a few yelps, breakdowns and spastic riffs away from matching those masters of the heavy, but The Always Open Mouth's a heck of a move to differentiate the band from a glut of metal-spazz acts desperate for our dwindling attention.

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The Always Open Mouth

Fear Before the March of Flames Equal Vision Records

Fear Before the March of Flames
Equal Vision Records