Three years after Hope for the Broken, Convictions seemingly turns back the clock to the mid-2000s resurrecting metalcore of the kind that hasn’t been heard for a while on I Won’t Survive.
Convictions origin dates back to 2012, which saw the band endure some lineup changes, release a couple ep’s in 2015 which did well on the iTunes metal charts. Add in some tours with the likes of Eyes Set to Kill and Upon a Burning Body and the band was making a name for themselves. Hope for the Broken helped to cement this reputation and the album did receive good reviews. For I Won’t Survive, Danyal Suchta replaced John Fleischmann on bass but the rest of the lineup remained unchanged.
Having reviewed Hope for the Broken in 2018, I had a feeling I knew what I was getting into when I fired up I Won’t Survive, but I was definitely not ready for this release. From the very opening of “The War That Followed Me Home”, the listener is transported back to the halcyon days of the mid-2000s when metalcore bands were popping up everywhere and following a standard formula that goes something like this: Heavy opening and verse sections that typically lack melody and are like breakdowns alternating with clean chorus sections…and then sprinkle in downtuned guitars, various electronica noises, and actual breakdowns and you get the idea. Obviously not the genre for me, but for those who are willing to go back and check, I actually sort of liked Hope for the Broken, concluding my review with…
…the emotion and power in the vocals were the distinguishing feature for me, both in the heavy and clean sections and keep Hope for the Broken from being just another metalcore album.
Unfortunately on I Won’t Survive, for me, the emotion is still present but clouded by the stereotypical arrangements and music and in many ways, it does seem like this would be an older album from years ago when these elements and song structures ruled the genre. To be honest, I do love the musical chaos that is inherently part of the songs, but back in the day, bands like Training for Utopia and others managed to bring that chaos into a coherent statement in contrast to metalcore where it largely used just to contrast the clean chorus sections. As an editorial note at this point, yes, I am an old metalhead/punk/hardcore kid, so it is likely that I just don’t “get it”, and I’m ok with that.
As I often do, I look around at other reviews of the album and was a bit surprised to see terms like “innovative” and “fresh breath” used to describe this effort and its place in the metalcore genre. And in all fairness, within the first month of release, the album did have likely over 1 million streams on Spotify, so it obviously strikes a chord with a large audience. The emotion is there and I applaud the band for tackling some very tough topics including suicide and being able to draw the listener in and impart the emotion onto them. For me, I was looking for some melody within the heaviness and innovation in the genre to me is a band like Darkness Divided who brought in some more traditional metal elements and guitar solos. Having walked through Cornerstone festivals in the mid-2000s and seen bands like Devil Wears Prada go from playing grass generator stages to headlining, this album seemed a throwback to those early days.
Rating: 6.5/10
Written by John Jackson
Tracklist
- The War That Followed Me Home
- Wreckage
- The Price of Grace
- Teeth
- Hurricane
- Everything I Never Told You
- Last Cell
Band Members
Michael Felker – Vocals
Danyal Suchta – Bass/Vocals
Joshua Canode – Guitar
Zach Schwochow – Drums
Release Date: May 7th 2021
Record Label: Independent
Weblinks: Facebook / Bandcamp / Website / iTunes / Spotify
Video for ‘Wreckage’
Video for ‘The War That Followed Me Home’
