"After You Find Yourself" is the new release from Romanian Hardcore/Metalcore band SMOG. Their full name is SMOG SMHC, an acronym that stands for Satu Mare Hardcore, Satu Mare being the city where the band is from. I could tell that these guys are heavily influenced by bands like SLIPKNOT, HATEBREED and the SEPULTURA albums after they stopped making Thrash Metal. A lot of that passion for the heavier moments from those bands and other bands similar to the genre come out in tracks like "Brotherhood", "End of the Road" and "Remember". "Remember" is a particularly good song, I should mention.

The lyrics of SMOG deal mainly with personal struggles with relationships and integrating into a rigid society. At times, the language the lyricist chooses to use is a little absurd. For instance, on the track "Denial", the line "Sodomizing your own heart" really jumped out at me; mostly because that metaphor(?) simply makes no sense. This is when I started to question the quality of this band overall.

While the guitars and drums sound fantastic on this record, the bass track sounds overdubbed instead of giving the impression that these recordings were done live. There are really no flashy moments, instrumentally. Even on the instrumental intro track, the angelic chorus synthesizers soar above the real instruments in the band. But if we can get back to the lyrics of this band, I think is what causes this record to sink lower on my scale of what dictates a good record. If you read over the lyrics of the song "Devil's Love", it's littered with chauvinistic verses like "You haven't got a soul, You filthy bitch, you whore!" that come across as petty and weak, as does the rest of the song with its sub-par clean singing interludes. "Traitor" is another song that just doesn't manage to build a sturdy message and "Imprisoned" sound way too much like a song from COAL CHAMBER or some other band like that. There seems to be a thin vein of rancor against non-religious people in this band. The vocal tone of SMOG vocalist Arnold Biro is actually quite good but these lyrics are killing me, man!

There are a few strong moments on this release but for the most part, "After Your Find Yourself" is lost on what its like to add imaginative elements to the writing and composition process.