Beats: Aliases – Safer Than Reality review
Aliases are a metalcore band based in Manchester, England;
I say metalcore but their facebook page suggests their genre is ‘brutiful’.
I’ll roll with that.
Last week, the band announced that sadly, their vocalist Jay
Berast has had to leave the band for personal reasons.
I quote from Jay,
himself: “My life has changed and with
it, my priorities, which means I can no longer be fully committed to the band,
so it's time to step aside to let someone else take Aliases forward for the
next stage of the journey.”
As sad as this is, he has is reasons for moving on and it’s
not like he’s leaving on bad terms… he just wants the best for the band which
is fair enough!
What did guitarist, Pin
have to say? “Jay has been like a brother to us however we are fully
committed to putting everything into the band and therefore every member has to
be in the same mindset. Ultimately this will allow us to write better music,
perform better shows and simply propel Aliases where we want it to go. We
certainly don't want to be presenting his successor with an album of finished
music to just slap vocals on”
Y’know, I have a
lot of respect for Jay for leaving when he did. I’ve seen a lot of bands whose
vocalist has left an unfinished album then the new vocalist steps in and
doesn’t know what the fuck’s going on so the album just doesn’t work.
The guys are all
looking forward to cracking on with the album and a new vocalist; let’s just
hope he can match Jay, hey?
Anyway, on 15th
August 2011, Aliases released their highly anticipated debut mini-album Safer
Than Reality and this is what I’m here to tell you about…
The album starts
off with What’s Left For Us and doesn’t fuck around; it just blasts
straight into the fast and heavy instrumentals, it doesn’t build up; it’s just
BLAM, right in your face then the vocals kick in; some hard, heavy and fast
metalcore vocals pair brutifully (in their own words) with the technical
guitars and the rather fitting drumming that’s just there in the background and
doesn’t feel the need to rise above the rest. The clean vocals are great too,
and they’re completely necessary. I really could not imagine this track working
without them.
The next track Reality
of Beliefs starts off a little more subtle than the first track as they
seem to have focused on starting the track by showcasing Pin’s awesome guitar
skills after a familiar cymbal intro which seems to be synonymous with a lot of
songs in this genre. After not too long, the brutal and indecipherable vocals
kick in then disappear as we get more clean vocals which are really the stand
out piece on this track. Probably my favourite song on the album as every
single talent is showcased in its own way.
The album just
keeps giving with We Never Should Have Met which is more in your face
screaming and straight up brutality before the interlude, Retraction,
which brings a real hypnotic atmosphere to the album and breaks it up nicely.
After that, we have All That Glitter’s Gold which I think is a brilliant
name for and song and, well; the technicality of the guitar skill is golden.
After a couple of songs, we then have another beautiful interlude called The
Beginning Has No End which really works as an intro to go into the final
song, Sirens. For me, on Sirens the strange thing is that the
rhythm guitars are standing out a lot more than the lead guitar. The rhythm
guitarist is the one band member nobody ever bothers talking about, Leah is a
great guitarist. I’m hoping to hear a lot more from her on the forthcoming album.
Now, you know I’m
going to have a criticism here because there’s a member of this band I’ve not
spoken about. The Bassist. Where is Joe on this mini-album? I literally haven’t
detected any of the bass guitars on this album which is really sad. Maybe it’s
the way it’s mixed but in all honesty, I’m not getting it.
Bottom line: I
really like this album. As the band themselves declare, it is ‘brutiful’. It
has a wonderful mixture of in-your-face brutality, melody and technicality.
Aliases – Safer Than Reality is out now on
Basick Records. I’d highly recommend it to fans of metalcore who are looking
for something that little bit special and different to the norm.
Go ahead and take a
listen, then buy it:
Aliases on
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aliasesband
Aliases on
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/aliasesband
You can catch Aliases’ final show with vocalist Jay Berast
at the Camden Underworld in London
on Saturday 8th September
as part of the Siege of Amida Records & Basick Records all-dayer. Read
about it here: http://www.boozebeatsbites.com/2012/08/beats-gig-alert-soar-basick-records-all.html
Coming soon, a legendary interview with Aliases guitarist Graham ‘Pin’ Pinney as the final part of an
Aliases/Basick Records Trio…
Nate
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