Thursday, May 24, 2012

To Speak Of Wolves - Find Your Worth, Come Home


I've been waiting for this release for a while now. I was so taken by To Speak Of Wolves debut album Myself > Letting Go. It channeled Underoath, but with a more aggressive tone and was overall a fantastic debut, that met with a bit of an underwhelming response. One vocalist change and two years later Two Speak Of Wolves are back with their sophomore release entitled Find Your Worth, Come Home. The album continues the sound they established and adds influence from the likes of Oh, Sleeper (and a guest vocal spot from Micah Kinard), Underoath and Norma Jean's newer stuff.



The album's opener grabs your attention from the get go and lets you know the band is back as a tighter more refined and aggressive version of themselves. The first two tracks channel Oh, Sleeper latest release pretty heavily, but that album is so solid that it comes off as a good thing. 'Hivemind' the opening track, begins with a buzzing that is quickly destroyed by a wall of sound. This well written discordance is continued throughout the album and works fantastically well.

'Broken Birds' helps further the unnerving atmosphere by beginning with an odd but really cool sounding bass line, that is broken up by a wall of sound similar to 'Hivemind'. This track channels Norma Jean, especially around the two minute mark when things calm down just a tad with an electronic element coming in and layered almost robotic clean vocals atop the music, it settles down in the most unsettling way.

'Broken Birds' flows right into the next track 'A Simple Thought Changed Everything' which is the first track to use clean vocals predominantly. It's also one of the slower tracks on the album, and it brings in an Underoath inspired chorus/drum section around the 2:30 mark that epitomizes the song for me.

'Nostalgia Seeds' begins with a nice screamed lyric that is repeated, and followed by the wall of sound. I'm not one to really praise breakdowns all the time, but I do enjoy them when they are well placed and fit the song very well. This song builds up to this really awesome breakdown with the lyrics "It's always raining on me! Raining on me!" repeated. It's an awesome section.

The closing track 'Rearview Memories' is one of the most interesting and memorable tracks on the album. It features two guests Bree Macallister and Levi The Poet, who reminds me a lot of Dan Smith from Listener. Levi's poem really steals the show on this one and adds so much emotion to the track. It's a solid piece that ends the album off perfectly.

Overall the album is great, it advances the bands sound, while taking obvious influences from three of Metalcore's top bands. Any fan of Oh, Sleeper, Underoath, and Norma Jean will enjoy this album. Also if you didn't know Phil Chamberlain is in this band, Phil's brother is Spencer Chamberlain who is the vocalist for Underoath.

(Also this is my 200th post!)

If you have spotify you can listen to the whole album right here!

To Speak Of Wolves - Find Your Worth, Come Home


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