MISS MAY I | Shadows Inside | Album Review

NOTE: This review was posted on June 8, 2017.

Whenever it comes to metalcore and the modern era of metalcore bands, Miss May I is the band that seems like its style is the closest to bands like Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying that really brought the style to the forefront and mixed accessibility in with it. Not to say Miss May I is one of the most popular names in the metalcore scene, but since their inception they have definitely aimed to reflect the sounds that you heard with those two names and do it in more of a 2010's decade style, though their first effort, a disc entitled "Apologies Are For The Weak", added in much more of the heavy breakdowns that were popular among this style at the time. Ever since then, this is a group that has opted to grow and become more mature as musicians in this field and while their works haven't always been good ("At Heart", their last album "Deathless", and even "Apologies" itself are mediocre discs for me that are not able to bestow charming music to my ears), I could definitely see that this band's intentions of making something much more intense and diverse were there throughout these albums, but it didn't jump out at me throughout these works. "Shadows Inside", the new disc from Miss May I, is a little bit of a different story. 

While this album doesn't go too far away from its genre as many of their peers have gone as this is definitely metalcore, the band has seemingly gone into this record with a knack for more melody and catchiness which they were certainly attempting to make a reality with "Deathless", but it didn't work out as much for them there. On this album, I feel that the five men that make up this band have finally put the most focus as they possibly can into this project and made something that is definitely melodic and hooky, but it's a disc that also has diversity that doesn't confuse the listener. This is a genuine album in that respect, and unlike albums from bands like Redeem Revive that have recently been released, the highs and lows don't feel off-putting or disjointed. But, along with the diverse sounds they have on this record, there's still some familiarity that fans of this band will recognize from their past works, which is easy to see in the album's first track, which is the title track. There's definitely the Drop C metalcore chugging you get on this song as well as Levi Benton's screaming vocals which are the best I've heard out of him yet, but even here there is some melody as the chorus has a much more hook-centered property around it, and the clean vocals you hear are also top-tier on this song and on this disc, and this is something that continues into the next song "Under Fire". 

Once we get to Track 3, however, which is "Never Let Me Stay", the stylistic shifts and the diverse values they've utilized on the album come into play. This is one of the few tracks on here that truly sounds different from the rest, and that's a great thing for the album. It's one of the softer moments on the album with the clean vocalist, Ryan Neff, having this track mostly all to himself, with Levi in the background doing unclean vocals on certain parts, and this is how you intertwine unclean vocals into a soft song correctly. You see many bands of this regime try to do a softer track like this in order to make an attempt to explore more avenues as a group, but a lot of these also call for the screamed vocals and a heavier passage in order to inject toxin into the song in order to kill it, and it's very frustrating when that happens. On this track, and on another song we get on this album entitled "Death Knows My Name", whenever the unclean vocals are heard, which are mostly in the background as the clean vocals are going on, there's just something about what they're doing with it that honestly offers some uniqueness. They sort of do the same thing on a track called "Crawl", but I don't feel as though that track does it quite as well as "Never Let Me Stay" and "Death Knows My Name", which are the two songs I'll probably be inclined to revisit the most here as they are so good. 

Whenever you get to the more familiar side of this album with the metalcore characteristics, this is one that does have a lot to offer. Getting past the two opening tracks "Shadows Inside" and "Under Fire", we also have tracks like "My Destruction" which has an acoustic introduction before getting to some well-rounded energy and is probably the most unique out of the heavier tracks. But, of course, there are tracks like "Lost In The Grey" that sound very similar to what Miss May I has done in the past but it seems like they injected some charisma into this part of the album as "Lost In The Grey" and "Swallow Your Teeth" are very competent in the realm of their heaviness as well as their value. Though I'm not going to act like this is exactly the best metalcore representation I've ever heard or anything like that as it clearly isn't, because there are weaker tracks on this album such as "Casualties" and the closing track "My Sorrow", which really should've bookended this album just as well as the title track began this album, as you do get a softer intro like the song "My Destruction". I guess I'm saying that I would've liked this to be a softer moment on the album, but instead it's one of the heavy tracks, but I assume that this is just a nitpick. Not saying that "My Sorrow" is bad, but it just doesn't end the album on a great note for me. 

But, going back to the actual quality of this album, this is one that is a major improvement over the band's last album and it is also an improvement over "Rise Of The Lion", a disc from this band I actually enjoyed. It definitely shows that a record label change can go over very well and while that is kind of a trivial complaint and has nothing to do with an album's quality, it does show that Miss May I might have gotten more of a focus through this transition from Rise Records to Sharptone Records, much in the same way that it could be argued that Emmure switching record labels in order to release their new album in 2017 was a beneficial choice. But even without that, "Shadows Inside" is still the most competent and complete album Miss May I have ever written. There is plenty of heavy metalcore riffage here for fans of that style but it also presents diversity for fans of metal or even just music in general who want some grouping of individuals in the metalcore style to deliver something that isn't just a love letter to the style that Killswitch Engage or even Shadows Fall made popular. Simply put, this record is more than what people expect it to be.

RATING: 7/10

What did you think about the record? Was it good? Was it bad? Let me know in the comments below. And of course, these are only my opinions. If your opinions are different, awesome! If they're similar, then that's great, too. So, don't hesitate- comment to me about it down below. Take care.