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Miss May I

Rise Of The Lion

Written by: EL on 11/08/2014 19:11:51

After the release of “At Heart”, Miss May I were a band I wanted to see more of. “Rise Of The Lion” being their fourth album I fully believed that they were climbing the echelon of the metal-core circuit and were about to take the next step into playing with the big boys. Unfortunately, throughout “Rise Of The Lion” I really struggled to enjoy what I was listening to and found myself increasingly frustrated due to ultimately the poor production value. The sound is weak, the support vocals are painful to listen to and the overall mish-mash of sound leaves you feeling a little deflated.

Having said that, Frontman Levi Benton’s vocals have definitely improved since “At Heart” and I feel that without the clean vocals of bassist Ryan Neff, Benton’s throat tearing vocals would shine through more especially in the case of my album favourite,“Lunatik”. Unfortunately Neff’s vocals really started to irritate me by the middle of the album and I think it’s time he stood back from the mic. The sound is so repetitive and out of tune, especially in “Tangled Tongues”, and by the end you feel like you may have spent an hour listening to the exact same song. Though not completely off the bat all the time, I believe that less would definitely have been more in this albums case. Using clean vocals for the sake of using clean vocals, constantly, really hurt the aesthetic of “Rise Of The Lion”.

It was refreshing to hear the intricate, old school guitar solos through the midst of “You Want Me” and “Darker Days”, as they held up the songs and the rapid pace of Jeremy Boyd’s blast beats tied in well with “You Want Me” and “Saints, Sinners and Greats”. “Gone” is probably the worst song of the album though, due to it’s overcomplicated, over the top and mashed up sound. There is just far too much going on in this track for you to even take a second to appreciate the guitar solos and dual vocal harmonies.

What I did like about this album is the outside perspective it took. Instead of speaking from the same old personal experiences and drawing from inward struggles, Benton took his inspiration from fan letters he had received over the years, many of which spoke about how the band had gotten them through harder times, “Lunatik” and “Echoes” being a main example of this. Ironically the ninth song of the album “End of Me” seems like a premonition of what is to come for Miss May I. “I’m still singing the same song” is almost too perfect a way to describe this album.

Miss May I are still sticking to their original, old school, thrashy metal-core roots and not branching out into a more prevalent mainstream sound which is no doubt refreshing to many fans. Now, I am in fact glad that they haven’t decided to follow the rest of the crowd up the same sound wave, but I am disappointed to see that they haven’t evolved much since their last album either. It’s one thing to not follow the crowd, it’s another thing to not move at all and after three albums that all sounded incredibly similar I am starting to wonder whether or not Miss May I is just a one trick pony, but who knows? Perhaps the lyrics “Will this be the end of me” ("Gone"), almost intentionally predict the future for Miss May I? I am still hoping for an evolution.

Download: Lunatik, Darker Days
For The Fans Of: As I Lay Dying, Unearth, Darkest Hour
Listen: facebook.com/MissMayIMusic

Release date 25.04.2014
Rise Records