Album Review: Capture The Crown - '‘Til Death'

It’s impossible to deny – the success of The Amity Affliction and Parkway Drive has well and truly opened the floodgates for a new wave of local hardcore and metal bands. The leaders of the pack have helped popularise the genres within the mainstream (The Amity Affliction hit number 1 on the ARIA charts this year, remember?) and now plenty of young up-and-comers are hoping to follow in their footsteps. The latest to step up to the mark are Sydney lads Capture The Crown, who are making their presence felt with debut album ‘Til Death.

Let’s get this straight: Capture The Crown are good at what they do. They write the kind of straightforward metalcore that makes you want to shake your fists, bang your head and shout along to. These guys know where they stand in the local metalcore hierarchy and they’re not trying to shake things up too much with a sound that’s heavy on the breakdowns and light on anything groundbreaking. You just know that album cuts like ‘Ladies & Gentlemen… I Give You Hell’ and ‘Help Me To Help You’ will stir up a decent pit live with their big sing-along choruses and chugging breakdowns. There’s no need to overanalyse Capture The Crown’s music too much, which is just what you need sometimes.

The problem with an album like ‘Til Death is - as previously mentioned - it follows a formula that’s been thrashed to death in a scene riddled with cookie cutter bands. There’s a real blueprint to this sound: breakdown-growls-clean sung chorus-breakdown-growls-end. Like a lot of other bands in the metalcore genre, it all becomes very similar, very quick. Capture The Crown may mix it up a little - ‘Storm In A Teacup’ is a dubstep-inspired number that would make Skrillex himself proud, while ‘The Departed 2.0’ is the token acoustic track tucked around the end – but a lot of ‘Til Death still blurs from one generic metalcore jam into the next. It’s not necessarily all that bad; it’s more a case of it bordering on the tedious at times.

If Capture The Crown’s take on metalcore doesn’t reinvent the wheel, at least their personalities shine via the album’s tongue-in-cheek Aussie humour and references. If you listen closely to opener ‘The Arrival’ you’ll hear distant crowds chanting ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi’. It’s a cool way to kick things off and shows they’re proud to be Australian. On top of vocalist Jeffrey Wellfare’s use of ‘mate’, one larrikin in the band cries, ‘Oi, are we done?’ around the end of ‘Ladies & Gentlemen… I Give You Hell’. It actually sounds quite funny when it pops up out of the blue, and reassures us that Capture The Crown aren’t another metalcore band taking themselves too seriously. These guys are just regular dudes playing music they enjoy. Thank god.

Capture The Crown’s debut album, ‘Til Death, is further evidence that Australian bands are capable of standing their ground and measuring up against some of the biggest international names in metalcore. This album may have its faults, but it’s still a solid start from a band relatively new on the scene.

1. The Arrival
2. #OIMATEWTF
3. Fork Tongued
4. Ladies & Gentlemen… I Give You Hell
5. LAX
6. You Call That A Knife? This Is A Knife!
7. Storm In A Teacup
8. Help Me To Help You
9. Deja Vu
10. Insomniac
11. RVG
12. Til Death
13. The Departed 2.0
14. Welcome To My Worlds