Straight Line Stitch - When Skies Wash Ashore Koch Records By Soup

Metal music, like any long standing genre, is constantly evolving. It has created its own spectrum based on the heaviness of artists. At the furthest end of the spectrum you have Death Metal, Black Metal, Speed Metal and Thrash. Going backwards from there on this side of the border, separating Metal from the Rock genre, lays appropriately Rock Metal. Here you’ll find clean-vocalized melodic breakdowns, tempo changing choruses, and a slightly more accessible mainstream image. Vocalist/Lyricist Alexis Brown has an impressive guttural scream as well as clean, soulful crooning. The transition isn’t so much uncomfortable as it is polarizing; she has an excellent scream and a phenomenal singing voice that conflict with each other.     The album, When Skies Wash Ashore, is as solid as the band backing up Alexis is tight. They seem to have found the way to forge the band’s distinct sound by following their vocalist’s lead, rocking with her crooning and thrashing with her screaming. The band is at its best during the most extreme moments with their songs “Taste of Ashes,” “Black Veil,” and “Adult Cinema,” as opposed to the epically grungy “Eucharist” or the pop-rocky “What You Can Do To Me.” I applaud this band as a working unit as it’s obvious the duality of their sound is intentional. I can appreciate the vision and admire any woman who stands in front of the ridicule of being judged a “novelty” yet still screaming because she loves it. Straight Line Stitch’s debut release is promising, but the future of this band depends on them picking a side of the line and sticking to it.

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Published on: 2008-10-10 (4771 reads)