Reviews

It wouldn’t come as a surprise to find out that Eighteen Visions spent more time picking out which outfits they should bring on the Warped Tour then they did on this record. According to my Trustkill Records trading card, the band’s favorite designers include Diesel and Seven For All Mankind. Interesting, their music and their jeans have a lot in common: both are completely devoid of originality and neither live up to the hype. With a big label behind them, the only thing huge about these guys is their ability to disappoint. 
 
As someone who handed out a deserving five stars to the bands’ previous effort, Obsession, and then spent the next few weeks defending it to everyone who was too tough to see past the eyeliner, I’m thoroughly pissed off about what I’m listening to right now. Even the radio is too smart to bite any of this. Blast beats and metal riffs can only go so far for a band before they have to start relying on their looks to get by I suppose. This record literally has the energy of a baked potato and the emotion of a ninth grade boy who believes that Motley Crue is the only band, ever.  At least he doesn’t think that Eighteen Visions is the only band, ever. 
 
Incidentally,  I can’t pick out a single song on this record that warrants description. “Our Darkest Days” has a tolerable yet deceptive introduction in the sense that it suggests an equally metal-fused, bass heavy trip down glamrock lane. With the rest of the titles that follow including “Pretty Suicide,” “Broken Hearted” and “Black and Bruised,” can you blame me for my skepticism? By the end of “Tonightless” I’d like the past hour of my night back, please. Metalcore is not a wasted genre; hell, I like this band! But the same twelve songs set to the tune of songs twice written are not metal in any sense of the word.  I rocked out to Vanity (still do!) and I stuck up for Obsession like it was my very own but I will not spend another word writing about this self titled nightmare.