Anthym
Masks Of Sanity (2003)
Scott Heisel
This is what I like to see - a band that is completely unsigned, putting forth a lot of effort to making sure their debut album looks and sounds really, really good. Anthym, a 4-piece band from California, understand the idea that you don't need to have label backing to produce a quality product.
Musically, Anthym's sound is that of early Thrice mixed with some of the machine-gun percussiveness found on earlier Fat Wreck bands like Strung Out or Good Riddance. The band's guitarists love power chords, but love whipping out random metal licks even more [which really earns them the Thrice comparison]. But this band isn't a poor man's Thrice, by any means [Contender, anyone?]. The band incorporates a lot more melody in their song structure, occasionally venturing into the "screaming" category but only for color purposes. It's never overdone.
The album itself sounds phenomenonal. These kids probably put a lot of time and effort [and cash!] into recording this disc, and it shows. The artwork is really nice, too, but will also probably garner comparisions to "The Illusion Of Safety" [and about a million other CDs right now, too].
Sadly, though, the band runs out of ideas towards the end of the disc. First track "Broken Vessel" is by far the best song on the disc, and from there the album slowly descends downhill until it becomes nothing more than glorified background music. This isn't to say the band is bad; it just means that while they have a very modest amount of talent, they need to work more on their originality. Bands existed before Thrice - try discovering some of them.
I give this a 5 because I think the band a large pool of talent to draw from, and they have plenty of room to grow. I wouldn't be surprised if they got signed within a few months.