Screamo with a female singer? Now there’s a genre-defying, boundary-pushing concept if ever I’ve heard one. I jest, obviously. While many of the bands peddling the scream/shout brand of what the kids call music are no doubt an honest bunch, I’m a little more sceptical and after three or four years of black clothing-clad kids wearing spray on jeans screaming and shouting their way across a violent backdrop of machine-gun drums and deep scowls, I see this genre as more of a fashion trend than a musical tour-de-force. Obviously there are some very good bands within the genre, either those who kicked it off or those who have tried to move the style of music forward over the last few years. Flee The Seen do neither; they’re simply more of the same but with a female vocalist.
And to be fair said female vocalist, Kim Anderson, isn’t too shoddy. Infact she saves this from being absolute garbage and instead gives a rotting corpse a temporary resuscitation. Flee The Seen won’t change your life – if any of this music is remembered 10 years down the line I’ll eat a hat – but for an angst-ridden teen crying over where their next star tattoo will be inked, this could offer a reprieve from the usual garbage. ‘Wardrobe Full of Fiction’ and ‘Wire Tap Out’ are passable, but the rest lives in cliche-land, where all is just as you expect it.
www.myspace.com/fleetheseen
Facedown Records
Paul