Focus Reviews

A.W.A.S. - Hope
Style: Death Metal
Running Time: 38 Minutes and 19 Seconds
Label: www.opengraverecords.com


Whats on tap; Death Metal with Christian themes... Metal for Jesus ? I just can't get too behind this musically. By no means is 'Hope' absolutely horrible or anything, but its so blandly done that I lose interest about 10-15 minutes into the album. If your bread and butter is thick death metal with little to no technical ambition then A.W.A.S. should be right up your alley.

A.W.A.S. is a pretty standard death metal band, they rely on very thick guitar tones and blasting drums. Very little is different about each song, most leading into the next sounding vaguely familiar riff wise and pattern wise. In fact I couldn't even distinguish the beginning of the album again when it was cycled over on repeat. The album leads off with a small build up of drums and what seem to be horns sounding like an epic intro that quickly ends. Leading us to first song "Your Choice" this four minute long song sets the pace for this entire album, short blasting passages with fairly mid-paced riffing swirling around. Very little technical improvement is made throughout the rest of the album. Theres an occasional thrash passage that features a solid lead riff or two but where this album really goes wrong is on the drums.

I don't know how this got put out with drums sounding like one of those little monkeys pounding the two cymbals together. While certainly not a big budget release, and I'm sure that doesnt help with production, you'd at least want the entire album base to be built around something that sounds fairly decent as a base thats the drums job. The snare sounds fine, the cymbals and bass kicks are what sound horrible, maybe it was a miking mishap or something but the double bass work sounds really low almost not audible in most of the songs. For near 40 minutes the band stumbles their way through Eleven songs, ten of which actually feature instrumentation. The last of which happens to be a song called "Saved" which blows by in one minute and ten seconds with an actual fury that wasn't heard on the album from its other tracks. Which really made it a welcome song to hear at the end of the album.

Though 'Hope' would have been much better if every song on the album showed as much promise as the last song, therein lies my problem with rating this. There was really no point of this album up to the end of it that was honestly enjoyable, religious overtones aside, musically it just wasn't that great. But that end song, that end song, showcased a very nice change and hopefully with more time A.W.A.S. will develop their sound around what works most definitely best for them, the blasting raw fury found in "Saved" would be a good start for them.

Score: 4/10