The Eyes Of A Traitor - Breathless - review

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The Eyes Of A Traitor - Breathless - review

Cover image of the reviewed item
Band
The Eyes Of A Traitor
Album
Breathless
Style
Melodic death metal, Metalcore
Release date
July 12, 2010
Reviewer
N/A
8.0
Tracklist
01. Prologue
02. The Birth
03. Come To My Senses
04. The Real You
05. Your Old Ways
06. Talk Of The Town
07. Nothing To Offer
08. Breathless
09. Crumble And Break
10. Grounded
A review by
jupitreas
October 26, 2010
Sometimes a story is inadvertantly written from how a band reacts to a review. Or rather - from how they fail to react. When writing about their debut, I thought The Eyes Of The Traitor had lots of potential just waiting to be tapped into. After all, they were going on tour with Gojira and their label is Listenable records - a home for many unique and worthwhile acts such as Textures, Dagoba and Hacride. Unfortunately, it seems that The Eyes Of A Traitor have used none of these excellent learning opportunities and have now decided to pollute our oft-abused ears with what is basically some run-of-the-mill wannabe-American metalcore. Breathless is a definite step down in terms of quality from the band's debut A Clear Perception and an album that I couldn't possibly recommend to anyone with a straight face.

There is actually nothing inherently wrong with a desire to belong to the metalcore scene - even as depleted of creativity as it is. After all, every genre typically has a small number of popular representatives, as well as a few lesser-known but unique second tier bands. Unfortunately, The Eyes Of A Traitor really put no effort whatsoever into sounding unique and the problem with this is that if you're not Killswitch Engage or Chimaira, you're not going to have any success playing ordinary metalcore since those bands not only did it better, their music is also what everyone thinks about when you mention the word metalcore. As a result of all this, Breathless, with its bog-standard mixture of staccato riffing, melodic leads, syncopated rhythms, ubiquoutous breakdowns and tone-deaf 'clean' refrains (the horror!) is completely inexcusable. Moreover, these conventional elements are so over-pronounced that they drown out any remaining indications of talent present in this album, such as the occasionally intriguing melodic lines in the title track or some interesting rhythms in "Crumble And Break". The Eyes Of A Traitor sound like a small-time band that imitates big-name heroes for a very limited, local audience. They certainly don't sound like a band that deserves international distribution and shelf-space alongside the likes of Gojira or Burst.

On the other hand, it really makes me wonder - why did this band commit such a folly? They certainly did have potential on their debut album and this potential is still there, even if it is now obscured more than ever. The Eyes Of A Traitor may yet surprise us all with something unique and unforgettable; however, I am not sure if they can recover from the blunder that is Breathless.
Written on 26.10.2010 by
jupitreas
Written on 26.10.2010 by
jupitreas
With Metal Storm since 2002, jupitreas has been subjecting the masses to his reviews for quite a while now. He lives in Warsaw, Poland, where he does his best to avoid prosecution for being so cool.
More reviews by jupitreas ››

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31.10.2010 - 16:11

Posts: 673


Lets hope they do surprise us. I still love and regularly listen to their debut. Disappointing this time around indeed.
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