### Honey For Christ: The cruelty of great expectations

#### 07/06/11 || Altmer

More like the cruelty of listening to this album. What kind of person calls their album this? Must be the most emo title we’ve had in a few centuries. I have no idea what this band is up to with the song titles. Bad moniker, should be bad music, no? Actually, surprisingly it’s not that bad, just asks you the question of “what exactly is going on here?”

The reason for that is that the band’s music is a bit schizophrenic. Reference points I can identify are Paradise Lost’s newer work, Katatonia, Slayer, and System of a Down. This should sound like it’s right up my alley then, but it isn’t. The album is what you call the definition of hackneyed. It’s basically they wrote a Slayer part, a doom part, and wanted to mix it. The transitions are just entirely jarring. It doesn’t work. The second song for example sounds like a nice doomy song, but they feel the need to intersperse it with thrashy riffs that make no sense in context.

Crappy muffled production makes up the rest. The album sort of sounds weak and fuzzy compared to most production jobs and sounds weaker. Particularly the drums stand out as “what the hell”. The vocals sound pretty terrible too, like they’ve got no power.

Minus points for the blatant Metallica theft on “The day we lost everything”. I’m sure you’re proud of lifting Sanitarium’s opening riff, fuckers. Most of the things just sound like particular bands – but this actually lifts the riff note for note. Fucking hell. There’s even a few riffs that wouldn’t sound out of place on Dream Theater’s “Train of thought”. And that just makes me feel a little bit queasy. The similarities are too eerie.

This could be a good record if the vocals didn’t sound so shit, if they learned that theft is not allowed, and if they learned the art of melding songs together. The bottom line is: there’s promise, but avoid. For now. They sound like they could go somewhere. In ten years’ time.

- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: Rundown Records
- Website: Honey For Christ website
- Band
- Andy Clarke: vocals, guitar
- Paul McCoberts: bass
- Chris Armstrong: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. All hope was strangled
- 02. Another way down
- 03. How the dark gets in
- 04. Liar disciple
- 05. The day we lost everything
- 06. Failures Within
- 07. The final transition