VOLUMES | Different Animals | Album Review

NOTE: This review was posted on June 28th, 2017. 

It's very rare in these reviews that I kick off things right off the bat with my opinion of a particular album in these reviews, as I often will explain things about the band and the album before diving into the actual tracks that comprise it as well as deliver an honest opinion on these tracks as I go on. But, for this occasion, I am going to immediately start with an opinion that I have on an album that was just released and that's Volumes with their third studio album "Different Animals". This album is a major disappointment. There, I said it. It is a massive dud in a band's discography that once seemed like it was going to be promising, and this really proves why the process of listening to things a set amount of times can sometimes change your opinion on a piece of music. At first, I liked this and thought that everything was all good. But then, my opinion went downhill, and now it's time to explain why. If you are unaware and are actually curious about who Volumes is, they are a metalcore/djent band that had a great album in 2014 with "No Sleep", which was a sophomore album that was actually one of the better moments of the year 2014. But, after an unfortunate lead singer change due to a few antics with previous singer Michael Barr, the band decided to come out in 2017 with this album, which is a big departure from the original sound on their previous work. 

Now, at first glance, this seems to be a good idea. Any band willing to take the risk to deviate from their traditional sound in order to graze some new grasslands has potential to make something great within the construct of an album. There are many radical sound changes that have actually worked for me over the years such as Of Mice And Men transforming from a metalcore band to a nu metal band with some metalcore tendencies, either that or all of the crazy experiments that Linkin Park has done. The difference with those albums and this one is the fact that they knew how to build that up with great songwriting to go along with the instrumental side and sometimes it's be the other way around, where the instrumentals are good enough to keep the songwriting and vocalization going strongly. This disc is a complete messy junction of ideas that are cluttered all over the place and don't connect at all. It's a disc where I am actually with the crowd of people disappointed by it due to it being different, but there is also a bit more to the story as the album has flaws on it that aren't just from the polarizing style you get with this album. "Different Animals" is much more of a nu-metal album than their previous disc, and with that includes rapping as well as unclean and clean vocals, and they even have a guest rapper on a song entitled "On Her Mind" that appears on this disc. 

The thing is, all of this doesn't even work well at all. The lyricism is pretty awful and atrocious on a majority of these songs, including with "On Her Mind", as well as the track "Disaster Vehicle" which is a hate rant at politics, and in this climate that we are in as far as that goes you'd think that would be a topic that would be handled well. But, the lyricism is like a 13-year old online keyboard warrior putting a rant about politics and the police on social media with most of it being profanity and meaningless metaphors about a bunch of rats being squished in a grinding wheel and stuff like that. Listen, we have enough of that on the Internet as it is. We do NOT need it being projected by a band that has two studio albums that are pretty good, and then this disc which is a backwards evolution, where instead of going from monkeys to humans, it's the other way around. And there's even more atrocious lyrical content here such as the end of "Pieces", which has a very strong chorus and, to be blunt, very solid verses with screaming, and it feels like "Pieces" is the closest the disc comes to having a single, but then they throw in a curveball into the garbage where the lyricism takes a dive into the atrocious side and the song just simply ends without a third chorus or anything like that. Uh, where is the buildup? This track was going to be a standout until they threw in the ending where they throw in a few unnecessary curse words that totally kill the song. And there is also the final track "Left For Dead" which all around is pretty unlistenable. This track perfectly embodies almost every value of this album has in a nutshell. It has all of those bad traits about it, and once again, it falls flat and wets the bed where it's already been wet. 

I will give it to this album though, as there are highlights about it. First off, these instrumentals are pretty solid. The backing band does a very good job, especially on the guitar side of things as the riffs are very aggressive and tenacious and that's a thing you will expect if you're performing on a guitar with eight strings. The production also helps in the fact that the tone they use for the guitar work is heavy, and everything is heard loud and clear and that's definitely a good thing. I can see how these instrumentals would work very well if they scrapped all of the bad lyricism and put in some more thought-provoking lyrics as well as focusing on the melodies of the vocals and coming up with good ones that carry their way through the song without anything that detracts from the song. There is one song that does this well, and it should've been most of the entirety of this album, and that is "Pulling Shades". It's the only one on this album that I will probably listen to frequently, as the riffs are heavy and the drumming is very solid with the track, and the lyricism as well as the vocals are at their highest point here. And really, Myke Terry is a good replacement, in fact being a better singer in my opinion than Michael Barr. In fact, he was a replacement vocalist for Bury Your Dead for an album or two, and he did pretty well there as well. And on this disc, he does a good job with his role as the vocalist, just like the other members of the band and the people who produced and mixed the album. The problem is that what they're mostly working with is a very tedious hybrid of rap-metal, djent, and hardcore that doesn't work aside from "Pulling Shades" and maybe the songs "Heavy Silence" and "Finite". 

2017 has had its share of disappointments ranging from Demon Hunter's "Outlive" to In Hearts Wake's "Ark". But, those two discs still had some positive characteristics to them. Demon Hunter's disc actually had quite a few standouts on it even though there were definitely lifeless moments placed on it. "Ark" by In Hearts Wake had a great song in the form of "Passage" and some creativity in the lyrical department of things. Which makes this album by Volumes not just a disappointment which shouldn't be understated by any costs, but also a bad album that should be left on store shelves and in warehouses by fans of this genre of music. People, there are much better options out there than this. You have discs from bands such as Northlane, Palisades, Miss May I, and Motionless In White that have more focus and meaning than this. Heck, look at other the bands I mentioned in this review for better music. The only major saving grace this one has is that it's nowhere near the depraved levels of garbage that the bands The Letter Black and Falling In Reverse put out this year. However, in terms of disappointments, this is the most I've been let down by music since that Islander pile of trash from last year, and this is definitely one of the worst albums I've heard this year. 

RATING: 4/10 

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.