Misery Signals - Mirrors
"Mirrors" is the second full-length album from Canadians Misery Signals. The band gathered a great deal of critical acclaim for their 2004 Devin Townsend-produced debut LP, "Of Malice and the Magnum Heart", but have undergone a fundamental change in line-up since then. When founding vocalist Jesse Zaraska parted ways with Misery Signals in 2005, the band held an open audition for his replacement via the internet, posting an instrumental track on their myspace page for any would-be frontmen/women to croon over. The eventual victor, Karl Schubach, was actually a guitarist by trade and had never sung in a band before. This might account for the lack of vocal character on display here: - Schubach's vein-popping growl does the job well enough, but it could be any one of a hundred shouty blokes from the scene. Still, considering the freaks and losers who populate myspace (and I'm talking about YOU), Misery Signals could have done a lot worse.
Musically, "Mirrors" builds upon the metallic hardcore sound offered-up on the band's debut, fleshing things out a little by the time-honoured second album tradition of polarising their music: - making the heavy bits heavier and the soft bits softer. Often deliberately arrhythmic and atonal, a common element in their music is one guitar playing halting, single-note low string chugs while a second six-string weaves high, discordant melody lines over the top. Predominantly mid-paced, the tempo does seem a little unchanging and monotonous at times, but the raging brutality periodically dissolves into chiming chord passages. Dense and uncompromising, 'Mirrors' doesn't give up its charms without effort on the part of the listener; Misery Signals have too much class to take the easy road of simplistic loud/quiet dynamics and cleanly sung choruses. Or indeed choruses at all, really.
However (and you just knew this was coming, didn't you...), sometimes when people say that an album is challenging to listen to, what they secretly mean is that it's boring to listen to. I readily admit that I have the attention span of a hyperactive goldfish whose bowl has been filled with coffee instead of water, but there were more occasions than I would like where my concentration just drifted away while listening to "Mirrors". And that's never a good thing. But ultimately, although Misery Signals fail to hit my aural G-spot often enough, talent and passion will always count for something in this world. Screw Flanders.