Album Review: Buried in Verona - 'Faceless'

Over time, the Australian hardcore and metalcore scene has become cluttered to the brink of absolute suffocation. There are FAR too many bands who look, talk and act the same. And the bands who get big are either the ones who started it (Northlane, The Amity Affliction) or work hard to sound different and add their own touch to the tired template (Saviour, Make Them Suffer). Yet Buried in Verona sat in the middle. They emerged around the same time when the generic genre playing was all arising. However, they also had a different edge to them and they worked damn hard! What this bequeathed the band was an absolutely amazing album in the form of 2012's 'Notorious' Seriously, it was almost un-Australian to not enjoy that record!

So naturally, the band's fourth album, 'Faceless' has governed a lot of hype. It's something that we've all been excited to get our hands on and ears around. However, after the wait and the work that Buried In Verona put into this album we get a shitty excuse for a piece of plastic with some audio files on it not worthy of $10 AUD.

From start to finish, 'Faceless' is as bland and as tasteless as you'd expect from ordering just a salad at McDonald's. It's palm-muted riffs and chugs over and over and over, layered on top of some tight yet repetitive and unimaginative drumming. Copy, paste. Copy, paste. Copy, paste. It's all the same. Apart from 'Set Me on Fire', which is a lot like 'Lionheart' from 'Notorious', that is. It's a soft and soothing melodic track with no screams or breakdowns. In fairness and strict objectivity, it's a great song but it's not as captivating as you'd like it to be.

Vocally, it is a mixed bag. The screams are painful to hear. It's the same style as that of 'Notorious' but this time around it sounds downright tedious and has no aesthetic value at all. Clean vocally, the album is impressive. Despite being a tad bit overproduced, they've provided an endearing point of difference. If only the resonance had a better sound-bed underneath it.

The lyrics to 'Faceless' are just as generic and bland as the album itself. These whole 'Fuck You' and 'Look at Us Now, Naysayer' songs no longer feel relevant and genuine on a third album. Worse still, they're just fucking boring! People must be getting fed up with hearing about how these bands weren't supported, as they were younger by their mates. And when you're a band like BIV and you make this kind of carbon-copy album, any song about 'fucking the statuesque/normality' is just hypocritical. Add the fact they don't make sense half the time and boom: zero-relativity. Seriously, what does "Don't ever let go/ of the dream that you are/ so pick me up and breathe/ (sing for the moment)" even actually mean? The misheard lyric video for 'Illuminate' makes as much sense as the actual lyrics themselves.

'Faceless' is a perfect title for this album. It lacks all originality with the mind-numbing chugs, breakdowns and repetitiveness that this album uses as its template. This is the biggest letdown ever. It seems as if Buried In Verona peaked with 'Notorious' and now they have nowhere left to go but YouTube searching the name 'silence 'in the music section to see what shitty metalcore band comes up.

1. The Breach

2. Eclipse
3. Splintered
4. Illuminate
5. Graves
6. Set Me On Fire
7. The Damned
8. Catatonic
9. Antidote
10. Revival
11. Deception
12. Blind Eyes
13. The Faceless