Light This City

Facing the Thousand (2006)

fatpunkguy

With all the hype surrounding Heartsounds I thought I would post a review of a Light This City record. As you probably know, Heartsounds has two of the members of Light This City (Laura Nichol and Ben Murray). So how does Light This City compare to Heartsounds? To put it simply, it doesn't.

Light This City are typically classified as a melodic death metal band and that pretty much suits them, although they are much more on the melodic side than the death side. A stripped-down version of the Black Dahlia Murder would be an easy way to describe them. The big difference between a band like the Black Dahlia Murder and LIght This CIty, however, is in variety and quality of songwriting.

It's not that Light This City write bad songs--it's just that they are incredibilly simple and generic. They may hide behind technicallity at times,but there's nothing here that hasn't been done before and done better. A lot of the songs also suffer from their length, as there just isn't anything in them that brings them past the two-and-a-half-minute point, although they tend to go on much longer.

Musically, they are well in tact, although I found the drumming quite underwhelming compared to other bands in the genre. The production, however, is somewhat of a letdown as it feels thin and amateurish. Laura Nichol, as I previously stated, definitely holds her own and if you didn't know this band had a female singer before you heard this, then you probably wouldn't even notice.

So it doesn't surprise me that Laura and Ben started a skatepunk band. That sound is probably better suited to their songwriting abilities. In a nutshell, this is worth checking out if you love melodic death or if you are curious about the roots of an up-and-coming punk band.