When it comes to the Italian five-piece Metalcore group, DEFALLEN PROPHECY, and their release, "Death, Hate, Love, Life", I find myself at a loss for words. Well, maybe not all words. There is so much going absolutely sideways that I feel the need to break this review into two key arguments to best give you an accurate description. So please, pardon my mess, and do your best to follow along.

I'd like to start with the meat of things; the band. Vocally, Lorenzo Carnevali, does quite nice on his, "demon exploding forth from the once functioning cavity of your now sardine canned chest" style screams. His annunciation could use some minor fixing here and there, but then things may come out just a little too clean. Bassist, Alessandro Carenti, who also handles the clean vocals on this album, really needs to just stick to his bass playing. His vocal range is as shallow as a lake on the surface of the sun during the biggest solar flare this side of the Jurassic, and in all honesty, it seems as though it was meant as a distraction from whats going on musically. Francesco Olivia and Andrea Carnevali, are an amazing guitar duo. They are so highly coordinated to one-another's playing, that at times, I can't even tell there are two musicians. In other words, they play for music beef, not diversity. As far as their tones... they fall on the ever growing list of things that this band needs to work on. For a Post-Hardcore/Djent style band, you need solid, chunky, and utterly heavy sounds coming from your guitar section and throughout this album the axeman come off flatter than clay when it meets a steamroller. Now, the rhythm section is by far DEFALLEN PROPHECY's saving grace. Luca Impellizzeri comes up with a great heartbeat to this otherwise ready for cremation album. His performance would have been perfection had it not been for whatever DIY audio engineer set up the microphones and mixed his  drum tracks. And that my dear friends, brings us to the absolute biggest problem the album faces.

I must admit to the fact that I am no fan of post-hardcore. I won't stand before you and deny that. I am however, a huge fan of quality recording and have trained my ear over the years to pick up on things, though I don't think you need training to find the flaws in this engineers work. Musically, this album does not have much to offer, but I whole-heartedly believe 60% is caused from the horrific job done here. The guitar tracks blend together and seem to clutter other elements instead of complementing them. The almost perfect drum performance is hindered by a lack of cymbal volume and an almost complete absence of tom differential. Had I not spent quite some time in studios in my younger days, I would be hard pressed to say there was anything other than bass and snare on this album. Don't get me wrong, hip-hop is OK if you're into that, but I don't quite think that's what the band was going for here. What is without a doubt the worst offense against music committed since the dawning of BLOOD ON THE DANcE FOR is the vocal mixing on this album. For those who don't know what vocal layering is, I'll give a quick lesson; Basically, you record the same vocals twice to give it more depth and designate it as left and right, which when done correctly, should sound as one BIG voice that you hear right in the center. Neither the left or right should be prominent. "Death, Hate, Love, Life", features a slight, but absolutely painfully obvious, echo on the vocals which is a clear cut sign of someone behind the boards falling asleep on the job. My advice to DEFALLEN PROPHECY? Hire a new engineer to remix and master this album, drop the singing, find some darker and heavier tones for the guitars, give your drummer a raise, and call me in the morning. Otherwise, it's going to be over before it started.