Worst/Most Disappointing Albums of 2012

5.  BONDED BY BLOOD: THE AFTERMATH
Bonded by Blood was once one of the more impressive retro thrash metal bands out there.  Their last release was very good.  Unfortunately, they went through a change in vocalists and basically phoned in this album.  A shame.

4.  ELUVEITIE: HELVETIOS
When I first heard Eluveitie, I was blown away by them.  Their combination of melodic death metal an Celtic folk metal was extremely impressive.  But since then, Eluveitie has been trying desperately to remake that same album to increasingly lackluster results.  I am not sure I will give them another chance.

3.  SONATA ARCTICA: STONES GROW HER NAME
Like Eluveitie, Sonata Arctica was a band that I was so impressed by when I first heard them that I still check them out on new albums despite not being horribly impressed by anything they have put out since I first heard them.  This is their worst one yet.  It's basically modern rock at this point, there is very little power metal left.

2.  TIAMAT: THE SCARRED PEOPLE
I do not care for Tiamat's take on gothic rock.  But with seemingly each new release I hear something about the band incorporating some of their atmospheric death metal elements that the band did so well early on.  Each time it is false.  This time is no exception.

1.  THE SORROW: MISERY-ESCAPE
Run-of-the-mill metalcore with Christian lyrics.  Need I say more?

FMA Reviews: The Sorrow: Misery-Escape

Originally reviewed here.

Maybe it's time to actually look into some of the bands that I am asked to review before agreeing to it. I had no idea that there still were bands like this. I might have really liked this seven years ago or so back when I liked Shadows Fall, Killswitch Engage, and the like. If you have not figured it out yet, this is metalcore tinged with melodeath. Most metalcore bands by now have changed their sound somewhat, but this is definitely early 2000's metalcore sound.

The Sorrow has been around since about 2005, so they should have missed out on the scene that would have most welcomed them. But they are from Austria so maybe they were just a little bit behind and metalcore was just getting to that country. So yeah in addition to being a metalcore band, they also sound stale. That is not helping.

All of the metalcore cliches are present here. Chugging riffs, frequent breakdowns, good cop/bad cop vocals. Add in Christian-tinged lyrics and swooped haircuts and we have an extremely stereotypical metalcore band. Some of the songs are a little catchy but this is nothing that has not been done thousands of times before.

This one was very difficult to make it through. I might have liked this several years ago, but now it does absolutely nothing for me.