City In The Sea – “Below The Noise”

When reviewing albums, I, The Henry, have a ritual adhere < /Spencer Sotelo voice> where I listen to the music whilst reading whatever I can about the band. This time around, I watched a few live videos, tweeted @Cityinthesea – to which they only favorited my tweet… shame, and managed to read the Edgar Allen Poe poem that the band is named after. My concentration was abruptly broken when at the end of City In The Sea’s album Below The Noise, my iPod nano went on shuffle and started playing “20 Dollar Nose Bleed” by Fall Out Boy because I’m a manly man.

A relatively new addition to the Sumerian Records family, City in The Sea is kind of dark. The lyrical themes revolve around darkness, gravity (falling) and upsets because… they’re a metal band. I read some dummies on the interwebz label these cats as a “djentcore” band. That’s not… very accurate. It was a solid pick, on the part of Sumerian, to add these duders to their roster. They’ve got a really nice combination of staccato riffs, “break down” rhythms that are absolutely no joke and some shreddy, shreddy leads, not to mention that their drummer, Conor White, will make you his bitch. If I were you, I would def. avoid dropping the soap while he’s playing.

Self-proclaimed Nicolas Cage stunt double and lead vocalist Todd Christopher has a killer scream. It reminds me of a cross between the mayne from Born of Osiris and the dude from As I Lay Dying that supposedly wanted to have someone off his wife. Guitarist Jeffrey Christian does the clean vocals on this album. He’s got some sick grit to his voice, giving it a yelly quality. One of my favorite hooks sung on the album comes from “Perfect Human,” but while I was listening to it, I thought to myself, “This dude sounds a lot like Ben Bruce, from Asking Alexandria, on this song… weird,” and then later I looked at my iPod thingamajig and saw that Ben Bruce is actually featured on “Discovering Oceans.” Touché, City In The Sea. One of the best placed features that I can think of, as far as vocal timbre matching a song’s mood/sound goes. That’s not to diss the Aaron Matt’s, from Betraying the Martyrs, appearance – also top notch. These guys def. get their own playlist!

Track Listing:

01. Convoluted
02. Dead Beliefs
03. The Purge
04. Light The Way
05. Without An Answer
06. Perfect Human
07. Scarred
08. Becoming Stronger (ft. Aaron Matts)
09. Discovering Oceans (ft. Ben Bruce)
10. Overcast
11. Those Who Vanish
12. Defy

Run Time: 48:18
Release Date: August 20, 2013

Check out the song “Convoluted”