Review : DESTRUCTION OF A ROSE – “American Hell”

Destruction of a Rose – American Hell
Release Date: 2010Aug10
Label: BlkHeart Group
Rating: 1/5

Las Vegas has actually sickened me. I was once caught there in a stopover between flights and figured “hey, what the hell, let’s see a casino”. Between the bright artificial lighting, elevated oxygen levels, and desperate sense of failure permeating the atmosphere, I found myself lumbering through the joint with queasy disdain. Destruction of a Rose is at the forefront of the Vegas metal movement, but are unable to even produce nausea; simply put, none of this music matters.

Vocally, Evan Fox does the whole growls-rasps-barks-bellows thing, but also strains for clean, autotuned wails. He clearly has not mastered his desired range. They also fumble with profundity, like on “One Day Closer to Death” with “every man dies, but few men live”. A Braveheart line? …please. Then there’s the title track’s lazy stab at Western consumerism, and the limp-wristed call-to-action on “No Need for a Crutch”, which is too muddled with convoluted reasoning to be taken seriously.

“Soundtrack to Your Nightmare” is one of few tracks to avoid use of clean vocals, but the standard fare metalcore did nothing to pique my interest. The following instrumental “Shine On” does little but attempt mellow contrast between heavier tracks, though the ‘shine’ motif continues through “63”, a track that actually comes off claiming they’re going to Valhalla in the afterlife! These dudes live in the fucking desert; why not invoke Osiris or something? Of course, that would draw Nile parallels, which would inevitably grind them to powder.

Tracks like “Open Your Eyes, Not Your Legs” offer remorseful one-night stand reflection with some horribly-pitched spoken word in the middle. It’s unimaginative and self-indulgent, like American Hell on the whole, and you wish they would just figure out their issues on their own time. Metalcore is a glutted subgenre, and most are better choices than Destruction of a Rose.

FCC: 1, 3, 7, 9

01. Suck Out the Poison
(I Saw You Once in Hell)
02. One Day Closer to Death
03. Open Your Eyes Not Your Legs
04. Soundtrack to Your Nightmare
05. Shine On
06. 63
07. I Kissed a Vulture
08. American Hell
09. No Need for a Crutch
10. Rise and Shine