NEAERA AND CATARACT: RECYCLING OLD REVIEWS TO ASSESS NEW MUSIC

I guess I’m not a big fan of either Neaera or Cataract, ’cause I don’t remember their respective last releases* for Metal Blade, Armamentarium and Cataract, but a quick search of MS tells me I didn’t give either one a glowing review (Neaera here, Cataract here). But both bands are now streaming new songs from their upcoming offerings, and, not at all amazingly, I feel exactly the same way about each group as I did two years ago. So I’m going to be super-lazy and cut-and-paste passages from my old reviews to describe these new songs. Three cheers for mature and well thought-out music criticism… whoop-whoop!

• Neaera’s “Heaven’s Descent” is streaming here. It comes off of Forging the Eclipse, which Metal Blade will release on October 26. “I hesitate to say that Neaera’s problem is that they’re working in the same tired melodic metalcore genre as are a million other bands, because their countrymen in Heaven Shall Burn have found a way to keep said genre interesting for the umpteenth time… rather, I think Neaera are just missing that indefinable ‘it,’ whatever the fuck ‘it’ is.”
• Cataract’s “Urban Waste” is streaming here. It comes off of Killing the Eternal, which Metal Blade will release next week. “Even if Cataract can write riffs and melodies that are completely inoffensive and totally hummable, they fail to write any that are truly memorable. It’s a fine line, to be sure, but one that separates the good bands from the great ones, and Cataract, alas, are not a great band.”

Now maybe some of you guys can recycle your old comments below.

-AR

*CORRECTION: Apparently Neaera have released one other album since then. How I’ll live with myself for missing a record by this brilliant band, I don’t know. I guess I’ll just take it one day at a time.