Thoughtcrimes - Altered Pasts
The Dillinger Escape Plan is one of the most important bands of the late 90s and early 2000s metalcore / mathcore scene. I absolutely love their first couple of albums, whether it’s 1999′s Calculating Infinity or 2004′s Miss Machine. Those two albums are also very interesting, because in that five years between those records, metalcore changed a lot, but they still made it work. It was a shame when they broke up in 2016, but all good things must come to an end, right? They’d been around for almost 20 years at that point, so you can’t blame them for parting ways, but the good thing is that it means new bands from former members, one of which being the new band from former drummer Billy Rymer, who played with the band on their last three albums. All of those records are great, and he even played on the album that was my jumping on point for the band, 2010′s Option Paralysis. That was one of the first “mathcore” I ever heard. I knew their name, and I remember seeing the album at Best Buy or something like that, so I bought it and had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I oddly really enjoyed it, even though I had no idea what I was listening to. I’ve heard of Rymer’s new band, Thoughtcrimes, since they debuted in 2019, a few years after Dillinger’s breakup, but I never listened to them until now. The band dropped their debut album, Altered Pasts, and I thought I’d check it out, just for kicks, especially because I haven’t listened to a lot of heavy music lately. I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz, weirdly enough, but more will come on that later on (as I have a few reviews in the pipe line when it comes to jazz).
I didn’t know what to expect with this record, other than that Thoughtcrimes followed in Dillinger’s footsteps by being a mathcore record, but mathcore these days is a dime a dozen. I love the sound, but I’m not easily swayed when it comes to new bands these days. I’ve listened to Altered Past a few times now, and honestly, it went about how I expected -- this album’s generic mathcore that does have a few cool moments, but they have a little ways to go before they really impress me, or they really can stick out from the pack. That’s not to say I didn’t like this thing at all, because there are a few things to like, such as vocalist Rick Pepa, who has this really cool mix between these brutal screams and clean vocals that have a Chino Moreno type of vibe to them. He’s not the best singer or harsh vocalist at all, but he does what he does well, I’ll say that. The instrumentation is pretty good, too, as there are some good riffs here and there, as well as some interesting uses of drum machine and hip-hop beats almost. It’s kind of weird, but it also oddly works. Other than that, though, this record is just painfully generic, even though their idea of combining post-metal / alt-metal Deftones-ish sounds with chaotic mathcore is interesting, it’s that both aspects of their sound aren’t interesting on their own. I don’t feel fully invested in either sound, unfortunately, even if it sounds okay. I wish I liked this more, because there is some potential here, but it just didn’t do much for me. If you’re into mathcore, I’d say check it out, it might do more for you than me, but it’s still worth hearing, at the very least.
