My First Failure - My First Failure

My First Failure's S/T album is a short, frantic piece of metalcore, or mallcore as some people call it.  Before you ask, yes, that's a woman screaming, not some angry child.  While the vocalist's pipes may not be as viscious as Angela Gossow of Arch Enemy or as beautiful as Sarah Jezebel Deva from Angtoria, the woman can still shatter some ear drums.  Sadly, it's the kind of ugly shattering where after a few tracks the listener gets annoyed with the screaming and wants to turn it off simply due to the monotony of it all.  While some female screamo bands like Kittie tend to alternate their vocals so there isn't so much of a headache going on, My First Failure has a very hard time accomplishing that.  From the opening track to the ending one, expect a splitting headache.  It takes multiple listens to finally let things become tolerable

Musically, My First Failure isn't so bad.  Perhaps if they had just cut the vocals out this would have been a great instrumental album.  Opening with "Alive," there's a few good rock riffs before the band goes into the usual chugging metalcore riffage.   Drumming is simple and sounds like a hammer beating a nail into the wall.  Boring?   Yes.  Engaging?  Not much.  The next track is a bit better as there is more variation in the riffage and tempo, but the drumming still sounds like their using a hammer instead of a drum stick.  And the worst part is the band is using that hammer on your head, vocals included.  Just when you think it can't get any worse,  "Restless" drops the hammer.  There's a different set of vocals included on this song, but don't get excited; the hoarse, male yelling is worse than the female screaming which makes this downright the worse track on the album.

And then comes clarity.  There's a sudden break of beauty with the track "Until Today" which has some excellent slow, melodic guitar work and the drums finally actually sound like they are being wielded by someone who has some skill.  Unfortunately, about a few seconds later everything slips back into chaos as the vocals come in and the drumming goes back to mindless hammering.  Thankfully, the guitars still have something to offer.  "The Past" does the same, guitars leading the charge of redemption- especially near the end- while the drums try as hard as possible not to fall into the "crap" category with the vocals.  "About Hearts" and "Turn the Page" (And no, it's not a cover of the orignal song that Metallica did so well covering.  In fact, it's probably best that My First Failure didn't create a horrible cover, period.) are somewhat of a regression back to the poor drumming and repetitive metalcore riffs that can start to give headaches.  It almost makes you want to skip back to "Until Today" and just relive those first few seconds again of grandeur.

Fans of Crisis and Walls of Jericho may find this S/T appealing, but it has the sound of a starting band who are targeting young, angry teenagers who just like to screaming and go crazy and release energy.  Good for them.  But, to try and engage an audience with more depth and skill, My First Failure is going to have to try  harder than what they've done here.  At least with their S/T they lived up to their name...

  1. Alive
  2. Getting Through
  3. Restless
  4. Until Today
  5. The Past
  6. About Hearts
  7. Turn the Page

Demons Run Amok
Reviewer: Colin McNamara
Feb 23, 2010

Share this: