Review : HASTE THE DAY – “Attack of the Wolf King”

Haste the Day – Attack of the Wolf King
Release Date: 2010Jun29 (US)
Label: Solid State Records
Rating: 1.5/5

My original 2/5 felt generous. This is the Christian metalcore quintet’s fifth effort; if all they can scrape together is faux-brutality, tired breakdowns, and aping a variety of styles, then count me out. The cover art should be your first clue, which looks drawn by a twelve-year-old. I have seen my share of Metal albums with wolves on the front––Burnt by the Sun‘s Heart of Darkness comes to fond memory––but Attack of the Wolf King is neither badass nor intriguing, yet strangely indicative of its contents.

Haste the Day has no idea how to write, they know how to imitate. Most of the time, they can cobble together some Killswitch riffage (“Wake Up the Sun”, “Crush Resistance”) in a way that doesn’t roll your eyes too much. But even in these songs, they need to repeat themselves so the listeners can tell one song from another. Overspeaking plagues this band in more ways than one; some lyrics actually read as scripture, and are equally dry. They lack both weight and depth throughout the album, somehow both cliché and cryptic, and in all the wrong places. There is nary a moment in “Dog Like Vultures” that is not laughably bad, from the music Mickey Mousing with the vocals to lines like “Who will protect you/From these dog like vultures?/And I know they’re small/But their teeth are sharp/We’ve been sent with eyes to see them/And ears to hear their steps/Our hearts are softer than the sheep”. This is to say nothing of the empty bravado in the chorus.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg. In “White as Snow”––perhaps with an allusion to Deftones‘ White Pony–– we hear Stephen Keech attempt his best Chino Moreno. Too reliant on vocal effects, he fails, and the band’s scant imagination cannot complete the song. There are also those that simply go nowhere and end abruptly, like “The Quiet, Deadly Ticking” or closer “My Name is Darkness” (barely half a tune). Ironically, their best bet is brevity. “The Un-Manifest” is one of Haste the Day‘s most efficient songs here, with concise lyrics, driving pace, and creepily slinking guitar in the background.

These are my preferences, though, and something tells me this music is for a different audience––one with a high tolerance for mediocrity. I am about to review their former labelmates, Norma Jean, whom I have been listening to concurrently. If you want to hear what a band can really do after five albums, Meridional is a better choice.

FCC OK
Try 1, 6, 9

01. Wake Up The Sun
02. Dog Like Vultures
03. The Quiet, Deadly Ticking
04. Travesty
05. Merit For Sadness
06. The Un-Manifest
07. The Place Where Most Deny
08. White as Snow
09. Crush Resistance
10. Walk With a Crooked Spine
11. My Name Is Darkness