Band:	We Are The Catalyst
Album:	Monuments
Style:	Alternative metal
Release date:	October 01, 2014
A review by:	tea[m]ster

01. Fight For Air
02. The Void
03. Under The Surface
04. Every Minute Every Day
05. Never Fall
06. Not Alone
07. On Your Knees
08. A Life A Lie
09. Our Way To The Sun
10. Time Will Show
11. What You Are
12. Change
13. The Edge

Monuments is an alternative metal album that blends together many different styles, such as gothic, symphonic and nu-metal, into a pleasurable listening experience. This type of musical diversion from my normal, everyday listening choices have always been a guilty pleasure of mine. Female fronted, mid-tempo bands like Lacuna Coil and Elysion gnaw at my "softer" spots when I want to ingest metal music that's warm and dark but sedate and soothing. We Are The Catalyst follow that same superficial and assembly-line manufactured pattern made trendy by other bands of this kind today, but that's perfectly OK with me because for some unexplainable reason I really enjoy this stuff.

We Are The Catalyst was formed in Varberg, Sweden by Cat Fey and Kenny B in 2012. The band released their first EP, Panem Et Circenses in 2013 to decent notoriety. Monuments is the next maneuver for the band and their first baby steps towards commercial success. The album utilizes contrasting male and female meshed vocals, complicated and intricate electronics and programming, and an overall fan-friendly appeal for a mass-targeted audience. There is a boatload of content on Monuments, the song lengths being between the 3 and 4 minute mark and the majority are gothic/heavy metal hybrids that are both melodic and catchy. About every fourth song or so is a melancholic ballad or memoir, and since Cat's voice is the best facet of this album, those songs really outline the vast mournful mood throughout the album.

Unfortunately, their really isn't a lot of diversity on Monuments. The songs follow the same format but are presented differently by indistinguishable chord progressions, time changes and drumbeats. All the hooks and melodies seem to be more of same with just a touch of variance convoluted around each verse-chorus hue. When I was approaching the back half of the album I was hoping for a "shocker" or a fly in the ointment kind of moment, because the album gets very repetitive. It may have done the band well to shorten the amount of songs on Monuments because in the music industry positive results are often based on the less is always more philosophy. I found myself not being able to single out or hitch on to any one track; very rarely is it the case that all the songs can be lumped together into one mass of equivalent expressions.

Despite the flaws, We Are The Catalyst and their debut LP Monuments is a positive expedition into the realm of artful and captivating gothic music. The Evanescence appeal and radio-friendly elements found in the music, plus gorgeous production accessible to a broad fan base, mobilizes the atmosphere in unexpected ways. Sadness and gloom are ingredients tethered in the aura with focused energy and contrasts itself well enough to be compared to other cohesive modern metal albums. Often times when a gothic band plays it safe they get lost and forgotten over time, but since this is We Are The Catalyst's introduction to the underworld I have reason to believe that this talented duo will make the appropriate adjustments and grow in the future.