Crossfaith - Apocalyze

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME

I'm... I'm speechless here.  Really, it's a rare feat to render a narcissist like me catatonic, but... damn.

I suppose I can start with something simple like the history of the band, eh?  Uhh... well, Crossfaith got their start in Osaka around 2006, and have released three albums to date, with this, Apocalyze being the third and most recent, coming out in 2013, and....

Fucking Christ this is such a strangely awfulsome album.

Look, I know nothing at all about this band.  I snagged this album on a whim because I like Japanese metal and that was the extent of my thought process.  I figured I'd be getting a darker Blood Stain Child, based on the "industrial metalcore" tag, since the metal part of metalcore is frequently melodeath anyway.  What I got instead was (and I swear I'm not making this up) a mashup of Disarmonia Mundi, The Browning, Limp Bizkit, modern pop, and dance music with the occasional obnoxious Skrillex-style bass wobble.  It's like some dastardly, Frankensteinian experiment to attract as many swagfag douchetards imaginable by just dominating every possible terrible style of music they might potentially listen to.  Seriously, the fact that Flo Rida doesn't have a guest verse is a mystery to me.

On one hand, it's the worst music I've ever heard, on the other hand, it's really adorably retarded in an almost cute way, not unlike a puppy.  I mean, I give the band credit in the sense that the music is almost never a weird, slapdash, stitched-together hodgepodge of styles, and instead manages to incorporate all of these bizarre influences into one cohesive sound.  There's almost no Winds of Plague style awkward switches in tone (though there are a few, as is almost inevitable with such a mixed pool of influences), which is commendable when working with such a head scratchingly diverse sound.  The breakdowns sound like they belong, the keys don't feel tacked on and superfluous, everything has its place in the machine and every member of the band is properly utilized, which again, is commendable if only for the fact that most weird, genre hopping bands so frequently fuck that up.

But back to that first hand, it's well thought out, but it's still a terrible idea.  You ever listen to a guy rant for hours about how every job interview should involve a test in equestrianism because of all the positive leadership it shows? (No? Just me?) That dude could have researched this for years, done studies, and personally believed the absolute hell out of this, and he could be incredibly well spoken and persuasive, but at the end of the day it's still a goddamn confusing and dumb idea.  That's what Crossfaith embodies to me, a very well articulated argument in favor of a blisteringly stupid idea.

If you can seriously explain to me a scenario where Nu Flames would be greatly improved with a funky Korn riff and an uplifting David Guetta chorus, I'll promptly remove my penis (which is undoubtedly made of lego pieces and shaped like a parrot) and eat it, because clearly we're living in a dream universe.  Despite all these strange examples I'm throwing out there (none of which I'm being facetious about), every song manages to be structured exactly the same, with identical tempos and almost every song length falling in the same twenty second window.  I mean, it's diverse, with some songs being pretty much straight up nu metal ("Hounds of the Apocalypse", "Gala Hala (Burn Down the Floor)"), while others are much more rooted in late era Gothenburg melodeath ("We Are the Future", "Countdown to Hell", "Only the Wise can Control Our Eyes"), while others are basically Linkin Park type pop songs ("Eclipse", "Counting Stars") while all having a huge slathering of dance synths over the top and brostep breakdowns sprinkled throughout, but at the same time it's homogenous, with so many of these clearly different songs with wildly varied influences sounding exactly the same as one another.  I fully expected this to suck once I realized the kind of music I would actually be getting, but man I would have at least expected it to be interesting.  You know, at least in some kind of wacky Mr. Bungle or Big Dumb Face type way, but no, we don't even get that.  We get Blood Stain Child's eccentric little cousin who's less into that weeaboo shit and more into masculine stuff like lifting weights, shutter shades, and lip tattoos.

The fact that there are Skrillex wobble breakdowns, and not one or two, I mean on damn near every single song, is just a complete dead giveaway that this band is manufactured and really and truly is trying to appeal to everybody at once, and in some utterly catastrophic way... it works.  I don't know, this is a really conflicting album for me because it's clearly unspeakably horrawful, but at the same time I could totally see myself putting it on of my own volition once this review is done.  It's so odd, the more I listen, the more I realize that the main influence on this band was probably a mix of Disarmonia Mundi and Linkin Park, two bands I really cannot stand for the life of me, but between the chugging riffs, the string skipping "that melodeath" riff (you know which one I'm talking about), the rap breakdowns, the heavy scratching, chunky bass, guest autotuned female vocals, WUBWUBWUBWUBWU-U-U-U-U-UB and all that, there's some endearing character behind it.  I can't explain why, I readily acknowledge that this is some transcendentally crappy music, but for some reason I just kinda like it.  I like how earnest the band is about their shitty genre blend, I like how well they mix all of these shitty ideas together, I really like some of the straightforward and more stupid riffs (like the main riffs of "Eclipse" or "The Evolution"), I like how aggressive and unabashedly brazen the band is with their one-dimensionality.  I dunno, it's well put together, but it just consists of god awfully wretched components.  Think of something like Turmion Kätilöt as covered by Far East Movement (Forget about those guys already?  Not on my watch!).

So I've done nothing but namedrop terrible bands and describe the music in the most unappealing terms possible from the standpoint of a metal fan, but at the same time I've continually praised the band for some intangible reason that even I can't explain fully.  I think I'm just going to chalk it up to shitty taste and then run back to my HORSE the Band records, but the point stands that there is at least some appeal here.  Keep in mind I listen to Touhou cover albums and think Nightwish is pretty alright, but if you're not a fan of overly sugary synths, incessant dance beats, aggressive melodeath, bouncy rap rhythms, brostep, or uplifting Swedish happy hardcore, you're not going to find anything to like here.  The fact that this band is apparently on Warped Tour this year shows that they're finding their target demographic somewhere, and they have at least some level of crossover exposure here in the States.  It's confusing and I still don't know how this band came to exist or why I find myself humming these melodies so strongly.

It sucks, but it'll get stuck in your head.


RATING - GO FUCK YOURSELF