Been there, bought the t-shirt
American melodic hardcore exponents From Autumn to Ashes have been around for a while now and they certainly seem to have some friends in the audience tonight, despite there only being a couple of hundred in the room to watch them.
First impressions are of a fairly typical sounding scream band tempered with melodic intervals and if you wanted to read no further then that’s pretty much what they are! The first problem tonight is that the sound is too loud, which makes it really hard to pick out the actual tune. The stage show makes up for it though and they certainly have a good energy about them with plenty of movement and an obvious enthusiasm. They get the front rows moving when they stray into heavier territory and when they really go for it they are quite impressive.
The problem though is that they just don’t do anything we haven’t heard many times before. The melodic breaks, whilst nicely done are very obvious and the constant posturing from the guitarists gets a little tired after a while. They do have a couple of big tunes and the longer they play the better they get, it’s not quite enough to really impress though and they’re just not doing anything different enough to really excite.