It's taken me a long time to accept Metalcore as a genre; through most of that time I've felt like it was just some cruel joke that I wasn't allowed to know the punch line to. After many heated debates with my friends, I have given in to the twisted notion that it may actually be a legitimate style of music, even though I'm still convinced people only use it ironically. That said, there have been a couple of semi-good bands to come from this unkindly named form of the music that I love so much and I can't just judge anything that gets lumbered with the label as some kind of banal, metal-by-numbers music that just sticks to a tried and tested formula.

And so I come to SYMPHONY OF MALICE, a two-piece Metalcore band from Connecticut.  The duo have just release their second album, "Judgement Day (The Aftermath), and it is actually OK. I know that sounds bad, but somewhere between the connotations of the genre and the album name that sounds like it could be an Asylum Films attempt at some kind of Terminator sequel, I just kind of got lost in expecting the worst.

For anyone that hasn't heard these guys before, they play pretty much like most Metalcore bands seem to. In truth, it has been this band that has helped me overcome my fear of validating this whole style. The album opens with "The Aftermath" and instantly sounds reminiscent of MACHINE HEAD circa both "Burning Red" and "The Blackening". The guitar chews it's way through harmonized riffs and triplets like there's no tomorrow, whilst the drums mindlessly pound their way into the apocalypse. My hopes were damped a little when the second song, "Endless Desolation" emerged into the fray and I instantly recognized the painful scars left on Metal from AVENGED SEVENFOLD and their cursed ilk. The album follows a similar vein throughout with some truly fantastic guitar playing littering the scene, and I was very impressed when I found out that there were only two of them in the band at the moment. The main issue with this album (and pretty much all Metalcore albums) is that it is just so samey. I got to the seventh song and I honestly had no idea how many I had really heard, it felt as if they had all melted into one omni-song. There is one other thing that I really disliked about the album and this is completely subjective, but song number eight, "Exit To My Escape" plays like one of the more self pitying songs from PAPA ROACH about how dark and sad life is and how this dude needs to find some escape from it all.  Grow up, get over yourself and don't use terms like "broken home" to describe a shoddy upbringing. That may have sounded harsh, but it really gets my goat when bands do this, so I had to vent a little spleen.

All in all, I have been pleasantly surprised that Metalcore has become a real genre and some of the musicians touting it seem to have an ounce of talent behind them. Check out SYMPHONY OF MALICE - Judgement Day (The Aftermath) if you like that sort of thing, because it's not half bad.<