Asking Alexandria – The Black

Rock musicians are terrible people, aren’t they?

The Black is an appropriate title. A black cloud hung over this album from the start. The band had problems with Worsnop. Make Me Famous (An underrated and better band) had problem with Denis. One asshole gets kicked out, another one takes his place. How long will this version of Alexandria will last?

The band wasn’t satisfied with their previous album. Worsnop got into drugs and other rock star troubles. Denis, his replacement, was a complete asshole to his previous band. The record sounds like it. Despite the noise and the screaming and the heaviness, something about it feels off. It’s not that the band doesn’t want to play this kind of music. The darkness in it prevents it from working.

Metalcore, especially the contemporary variant isn’t about emotions. It’s about slamming. When Worsnop dissed a girl for having sex (Why do musicians diss girls for having sex? Aren’t groupies the reason you start a band in the first place?) in “Not the American Average” it sounded like the most logical thing to do with metalcore. All these silly bands spitting serious poetry over breakdowns and here comes a band that rocks hard. an sings about partying hard. Breakdowns don’t sound deep and neither are the anthemic chorus.

This is the glory of Trancecore. It injected fun to a genre that was built for it. The band didn’t become Killswitch Engage, but they lost their sense of fun. It’s apparent already from the opening track. There’s distress in the repetition of the title “Let It Sleep”. The song is some diss track towards an ex-wife, and there’s bittenress all over it. The song has no structure or direction. The band moves from section to section, just trying to pound away their frustration.

The same thing applies to the title-track, which is pretty brilliant. It kicks off with an intense, downtuned riffs and screaming the crowd can’t join in. The lyrics have the same distress the opener has, with no sense of humor or fun. They need to cut Worsnop off, they want him to speak to them. It all climaxes in hushed singing and piano. Like the opener, there’s a lack of the stability to the track. Metalcore’s poor song structures now sound good – the band sounds too worried, too angry to care about coherency.

Carrying an album based on emotionally-rich Metalcore is hard. Killswitch Engage have been failing at it miserably for a while. Alexandria aren’t talented enough for this sound. “Let It Sleep” is a one-off. Multiple its messiness and all you’re left with is noise. No other track is as weird as the title-track. Alexandria abandoned the Electronic elements for some reason.

The band falls into the trap that many weird rock bands fall to later. Just like Disturbed and, to a lesser extent, Slipknot, Alexandria normalizes their sound. There’s nothing unique here. There are a few tracks that rely more on melody, but the biggest departure is a piano ballad. Doesn’t every band with loud guitars have a piano ballad?

Even Denis lost all of his charisma. He fronted Make Me Famous. They were one of the best Trancecore bands. Back then, Denis came off as a cocky, sure frontman who always broke up the Metalcore noise with Electronic interludes or beautiful melodies. Even if the band didn’t mix every genre in the world, they sure sounded like it. On The Black, Denis sounds like he lives in a world where the only music in existence is Metalcore.

There’s talent in the band. “Circled By the Wolves” comes at the end to bring the same intensity of the opener. It’s a roaring, messy song with no structure that just slams. In context, it sounds like another burst of noise. You can’t bludgeon the listener with the same sound. The heaviest bands were always more than loud and always had more than one genre. Slipknot’s debut is one of the most intense records ever, and they took cues from Industrial and Hip-Hop. Heavy music is like shock value – use the same trick too many times and the effect loses it.

The band still has potential. Every song sounds worse in context but the album is a stand-out in the genre. It has more emotional weight than anyone else, and that makes “Let It Sleep”, “The Black” and “Here I Am” worth a few spins. I doubt they’ll re-capture this though. Such emotional distress is lightning in a bottle. If they couldn’t milk the issues with Worsnop while it’s fresh, the opportunity is missed. Hopefully their next album will be more fun.

2.5 blacks out of 5