Band:	Downstroy
Album:	One Size Fits All
Style:	Metalcore, Thrash metal
Release date:	September 2010

01. Introduction
02. Pride
03. You Are A Fool
04. Within Your Skin
05. Your Game
06. The Keeper
07. Trapped In A Machine
08. Leave Me Here To Die
09. Song 2.1 [Blur cover]

Hardcore/Thrash metal/Metalcore
Label: Life Burn Records
Total Running Time: 43:59


Ah yes, Downstroy. I remember this band. Long story short, these Serbian metallers named after a Soulfly song and I went through a brief honeymoon period during the first couple of minutes of their album. But pretty soon the marital disputes between us were starting to crop up. And then Downstroy went ahead and irritated me to the point of severe nausea.

Their music isn't genuinely bad though. As a matter of fact their approach is pretty close to being right up my alley. Downstroy started from a clear hardcore foundation and thrashed it all up. Not really a venture ahead of its time, but it all stays fairly digestible. Further on in the album the tracks get peppered with metalcore-like ingredients... slightly repelling perhaps but still nothing to fear or worry about.

But then the band decided it was in everyone's best interest to incorporate metalcore-like vocals too. I can look past all the screaming and the by times funny English accent... but the clean vocals are a major stumbling block. These are the kind of vocals that if they were in any other song, I would go stand outside my girlfriend's bedroom window, holding a stereo over my head, playing that song in infinity.

Anyway, don't you love it when a band makes a ridiculously impressive, mind-blowingly-awesome cover song of a well-known party hit? Well, that didn't happen with this Blur cover. Instead the band decided to fuck up a perfectly innocent song by murdering the shit out of the original. Not saying Blur was a bastion of musical inventiveness, but nobody deserves a "tribute" like this. And just like that, Downstroy goes down another point making them only a slightly-above-average band.

So in case you got into metal half an hour ago/are firmly convinced this world needs another core-something band/have anterograde amnesia and unable to remember generic music and/or why you came into this room in the first place, you have a winning lottery ticket right here. All the rest should listen to this album, forget it even happened and move on with the rest of their lives. I know I did.