You Will Die

You Will Die (2005)

Jordan Rogowski

If somebody can honestly convince me that You Will Die's self-titled album isn't one, long twenty-three minute song, I'd absolutely love to hear it.

This three-piece metal/hardcore outfit from Indiana has succeeded in writing an album with so little variation, so little actual substance, that I can't imagine ever listening to it again. It's not even what most would consider a typical "bad" album, but the band obviously chose noise over actual song structure here, and it really shows. "Memento Mori" starts out raging, with some slick bass bridges and tight drumming, but you just keep on anticipating the vocals to come in. As the song goes on and on, the anticipation grows, but ultimately it just never happens. So you just figure that the first track is of the instrumental persuasion, but halfway through the second track you realize, there's not going to be any vocals whatsoever.

So this could go one of two ways.

The band could make an absolutely dynamic album, full of twists, turns, ups, downs, and an overall strong but engaging technical sense, or they could write nine individual songs that sound like they're all one track. Unfortunately, the latter of the two is correct, and for that, I find little to no redeeming value in this album. "Punch and Gouge" perfectly illustrates the pitfalls of approaching the record in the manner that they did. The bland, repetitive chord progressions spell disaster for the band, as they don't make use of any sort of volume dynamics. It's full throttle almost all of the time, save some breaks for the chugga chugga parts. "Narcoleptic Goat" is another example that aside from a few decent drum fills, is a song that just goes absolutely nowhere. It's to the point of frustration, as I know that good instrumental music can be played with only three, hell only two members, but these guys, cohesive as their playing might be, can't find it in them to write some diverse arrangements.

Take your basic, run-of-the-mill metalcore album, subtract the vocals, and that's just what you'll find here. Metalcore is a genre zapped of creativity as it is, but this, this is really scraping the bottom of the sea.