Miss May I Beat the Sh*t Out of Originality, Leave it for Dead in a Ditch

If the title of Miss May I’s new album, Deathless, seems oddly familiar, that’s probably because their one-time Summer Slaughter tour mates, Revocation, released an outstanding record by that name just last year. You have to hand it to Revocation’s Dave Davidson, though — at least he’s taking the news in stride (via The PRP):

Thinking about naming our next record "Miss May I"

— Dave Davidson (@Dave_Revocation) June 15, 2015

Okay, but whatever, it’s just an album title, and Revocation don’t have a copyright on the word “deathless,” right? No biggie, we’ve all had our laugh, now we can move on our with day.

Except… the first single from the Miss May I version of Deathless is called “I.H.E.” This stands for “I Hate Everything” or”I Hate Everyone,” both phrases they scream in the title. And if that sounds familiar, well, it’s probably because Chimaira had a really popular song expressing that same sentiment twelve years ago:

And again: yes, I know that Chimaira vocalist/lyricist Mark Hunter didn’t invent the phrase “I hate everyone,” and maybe recycling that phrase isn’t as big of a deal as if they’d written a song called “Holy Diver” or “Creeping Death” or whatever.

But the fact that no one in the band said “Hey, maybe we should try and come up with a different title and different lyrics, just for the sake of being, y’know, different” speaks to this band’s entire attitude, which basically boils down to “Fuck originality! Fuck it in the ear!” They sound like As I Lay Dying ten years ago, which is to say, they sound like At the Gates twenty years ago, only with clean vocals. And they bring absolutely nothing new to the surely-exhausted-by-now metalcore formula. They are a copy of a copy.

Stream Miss May I’s “I.H.E.” below (if you must). Daringless comes out August 7 on Rise.