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Breathe Carolina

Hell Is What You Make It

Written by: PP on 09/09/2011 04:44:17

It's easy to dismiss a band like Breathe Carolina from a critic's point of view for their superficial usage of synthesizer, auto-tune and dance floor melodies to appeal for the lowest common denominator of music fans, crunk core kids. It's much more difficult to overcome such bias and accept that while bands like BrokenCyde and Attack Attack! (excluding their debut album) deserve to be put to sleep, there are actually bands who are able to take these (lame) elements and, almost miraculously, arrange them in such a way that the songs are halfway decent, sometimes even solid. Admittedly, these bands are few and far in between, and Breathe Carolina have certainly never been one of them - at least not before their third album "Hell Is What You Make It".

You see, this is a record which takes crunk and makes it sound decent. BrokenCyde might do their best in making the genre sound like a joke, but the screamed vocals on top of catchy eurodance synths on "Wooly" get to me every time. Yes, the songwriting is superficial, but once you accept that is the premise throughout the record and not to write a progressive rock masterpiece, you'll notice how songs like "Blackout" are club anthems in university towns. There are several such pieces scattered across the records which contain dance floor inducing synths or club-borrowed melodies, perfect for uni clubs where people are too wasted to care about anything else than to going crazy on the dance floor. That's why bands like Breathe Carolina have a great deal of success, because they appeal to that primal urge of us to dance and have a good time, while ignoring the artistic integrity element altogether. As we all know from experience, the regular club-attendee is hardly interested in the depth found in any music genre, they just want something that moves their bodies to a ultra-catchy synths, or better yet, wobbly dubstep rhythms (which also exist on this record to the detriment of all mankind).

So when you place a contrast of screaming and power pop on top of such a mix, you're guaranteed success as long as you don't fuck up your synths too badly. And that's something Breathe Carolina do very well throughout "Hell Is What You Make It". That said, the word 'longevity' might just as well be a foreign galaxy in their musical universe, which is exactly what you would expect from a band that sounds like the perfect cross between Cash Cash and Attack Attack!

Still, Breathe Carolina will undeniably be a big hit within the people who dress incredibly scene and are in their teens, and that's fair enough. You can't expect these people to have that much depth in their music taste at this point in life. But that poses an ultimate problem: will Breathe Carolina ever have fans that stick with them beyond puberty? People are bound to move onto less superficial music eventually, and even those of us who are suckers for catchy melody (read: me), the music lacks the incentives to come back in a non-club environment. Still, Breathe Carolina are miles better than most other crunk bands we've come across.

Download: Wooly, Edge Of Heaven, Sweat It Out
For the fans of: Cash Cash, Attack Attack!, I See Stars
Listen: Soundcloud

Release date 12.07.2011
Fearless Records

Breathe Carolina - Wooly by breathecarolina