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She Was Nothing

Dancing Through Shadows

Written by: PP on 12/06/2012 05:40:53

I've now spent a considerable amount of time listening to the debut album "Dancing Through Shadows" by the Italian band She Was Nothing, and no matter which way I twist it in an attempt to find redeeming qualities about it, the end result is always the same: this is garbage, nothing more, nothing less. This record is so awful this review practically writes itself, the only difficulty is in deciding which horrific idea of theirs to slash and burn through first. I feel like kid in a candy store! To get you up to speed, why don't you scroll down to the player below and press play before you resume reading. Take a moment to absorb the song in fully, before continuing further. Ready, set, go.

At this point you should be well versed into the first hyper frenetic trance section of a record that's rightfully labeled as 'trancecore', but where the metalcore element is but an afterthought in the midst of cliché ridden, torturous mess of dramatic synths that references the awful 90s trance/techno movement of Europe in the worst possible way. There are barely any guitars in the mix, and given that their only purpose is to create pseudo-heavy, rhythmic texture to supplement the focal point of their soundscape - the ridiculous synths - you can safely assume you're not listening to 'crabcore' a la Attack! Attack!, so no breakdown hell to be expected.

Instead, what you get is much worse. The whole ordeal sounds like the band listened to Enter Shikari's first record and thought (correctly) "well, that's pretty awesome" and then attempted to clone that sound without taking as much as a moment to analyze what made a track like "Mothership" or "Return To Energiser" good. What comes out of the meat grinder is a cut-and-pasted mess of techno music, awful clean singing, and shameless pop choruses that basically throw artistic integrity out the window of a skyscraper without base jumping equipment. Good luck surviving that 50 storey fall.

But as if that wasn't enough, the whole album feels like a torturous mess of intros and interludes mish-mashing each other to the extent that the whole album feels like an interlude with a couple of songs mashed on top by accident. Out of the 13 tracks on the album, I count at least one intro and four interludes, which are basically nothing but pure techno and serve absolutely no purpose to advance the flow of the album. But that's not all: even the songs have interludes packed within them, and intros within themselves to confuse the listener even more. And given how strongly present the techno/trance element is in the mix, one has to ask why She Was Nothing don't just skip writing metalcore altogether and focus on eurotrance because that's clearly what they are going for here. But I guess they wanted to be super trendy after hearing an Attack! Attack! song so they decided to steal riffs and ideas from pretty much every electro metalcore band to have ever existed. Anyway, long story short, this is recyclable, horrible, horrible crap that's passed off as music. If the listener contemplates ending his life on three separate occasions rather than continue listening to the music, something is very, very wrong with your album. Needless to say, this band (and all their peers writing this shit) should call it a day immediately. Anyone else, check out HORSE The Band if you want something awesome with an electronic element attached to metalcore.

Download: Beast Without Mother, Silence Screams When You Go Away
For the fans of: Enter Shikari, Attack! Attack!
Listen: YouTube

Release date 01.10.2011
Self-Released