Behind the scenes in the crazy world of metal promotion, hacks around the block were recently email slammed by Bullet Tooth Records and their announcement of the first video to emerge from the third and latest album by Cleveland’s Affiance. Entitled “Fire!”, opening the pertinent email inundated the brave reader with hyperbolic claims of this being a video of epic and untold proportions wherein things that haven’t ever been executed previously before cameras were being embarked upon for the purposes of pimping it and Blackout to the masses.
Seeing as how I recently watched a documentary about ‘70s porn star Bodil Joensen (look her up – if you dare!) and the special effects awesomeness of the Terminator franchise, I really don’t know what some shoe-string budget metalcore band could have done in a four-minute promo video that would be so earth-shattering. The reality of the situation is that “Fire!” consists of the band crab core-ing their way through the tune in front of *surprise, surprise* fire (some digital, some real) before being lit on fire while they play the closing moments of the song. Big fucking whoop, as any stuntman and James Hetfield will tell you. This is, however, a suitable and transferable example of the problems plaguing Blackout as a whole. The name of this band is one I’ve heard kicked around for a couple years via their road-dogging, via friends and colleagues and via the internet-sponsored grapevine. It wasn’t until now that I’d actually heard the band and let’s just say that the promotional bark makes much more of a splash than their musical bite.
Affiance hail from the metalcore side of life’s equation with their defining factors being the talent of vocalist Dennis Tvrdik and the fact they don’t have a three word name like the majority of their contemporaries in faith and song like Memphis May Fire, Miss May I, August Burns Red and the countless others who abuse quarter-note breakdowns and show their appreciation of At the Gates and Killswitch Engage by digitally sanitizing and neutering most of which made Slaughter of the Soul and Alive or Just Breathing recognized classics. On the same side of the coin, Blackout has the dubious honor of sounding like Blind Guardian collaborated with an Alternative Press cover star, what with their remarkable polish, rote breakdowns and predictability in the shred department. The riffs and melodies are streamlined with all aggressive edges beveled and spit-shined.
Tvrdik may be a vocal wunderkind whose pipes have the ability to tickle the underside of the stratosphere, but he lacks control and sounds so histrionically overwrought to the point where he’s not always singing to the song, but pushing his own limits simply because he can. The result is that he sounds like he’s dramatically straining to win a race the rest of his team isn’t even entered in. To wit, Affiance don’t always sound like a band. So much of what they do is bogged down in tentative, conservative restraint with Tvrdik trying to add dynamic sense to an overall flat sound. Listening to this is the equivalent of watching a heavily censored, edited-for-TV version of your favorite gangster movie. Theoretically and at its heart, it’s still metal/Goodfellas, but what you’re getting is an anaemic watered-down version of the real thing.
3/10
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