The Bad Chapter – Cheers To The Down & Outs
Throughout the last handful of years, “Octanecore” has really come to dominate the metalcore scene, for better or worse. I’ve talked about this quite a bit, but in case you haven’t read those reviews, or you’re new to the metalcore world, Octanecore is what I call a specific kind of metalcore that coexists with hard-rock and alt-metal. It’s pretty much hard-rock with screams, and maybe some breakdowns if you’re lucky, but you can blame bands like Bring Me The Horizion, Wage War, Beartooth, Bad Omens, and as of late, Sleep Token, for making this style of metal / metalcore popular. I’ve got mixed feelings on it, because it can be done either really, really well, or extremely boring and uninspired. I haven’t heard anything in this vein that’s really bad, per se, but I’ve heard bands that are extremely bland, by-the-numbers, and predictable by belief. When an album in that vein is done well, it can be both very catchy and heavy, ultimately bridging the two extremes quite well, so I’m all for it. A good example of the genre being done well is Beartooth’s most recent album, 2023’s The Surface. They went fully into Octanecore with that record, but I think it’s all for the best. The riffs and breakdowns are pretty hard-hitting, vocalist Caleb Shomo sounds the best he ever has, and the hooks are insanely catchy. Beartooth’s brand of Octanecore, however, is more on the hard-rock side, but there’s been a growing number of bands that are moving towards the pop and R&B side of the spectrum. I’ve already mentioned a few of them, such as Bad Omens, Bring Me The Horizon, and Sleep Token, but what if I told you that this sound has been around for the past decade and it’s somehow only now getting popular?
I can understand if modern rock and metalcore fans are just now hearing how pop and metalcore are starting to fuse pretty well, especially with the most recent albums from the aforementioned bands, but this type of metalcore was on the fringes of the metalcore scene in the early 2010s. You could point to Issues for being the band that really started that movement, but I was admittedly a little late to the hype train. I didn’t care for their self-titled debut very much, as I thought they still leaned too far into the metalcore aspects of their sound (despite how vocalist Tyler Carter had a great voice). I ended up growing on that album over time, but their second album is where they started to become more of a unique force to be reckoned with. They started utilizing their vast array of influences into something more interesting, all the while still being a metalcore band. It was their third and final album where they became something truly special, and it’s a shame that Carter ended up being a piece of garbage that caused the band to break up, but that’s what happens when a frontman is an awful person, right? I’d rather have these scumbags disappear from the scene than keep making music and being able to have a platform, even if they made great music (here’s looking at you, Jesse Lacey). There were a few other bands in that small, small scene, such as At The Skylines (that made one awesome album that disappeared, but I plan on talking about that record, too), Incredible Me, Light Up The Sky, Forget Tomorrow, Atlas Uncharted, and The Bad Chapter. The latter band is the subject of today’s review, but all of these bands had one thing in common – they played around with pop and R&B sounds in their brands of metalcore and post-hardcore.
I called it “R&Bcore,” and I was heavily into it, but it was such a niche in the metalcore scene, I could barely find anything that sounded just like it. That’s why I’m glad that more bands are being influenced by pop, R&B, and soul music (Sleep Theory is a great example of a new band that openly embraces these influences; they basically sound like if Fall Out Boy made a heel turn to alt-metal / metalcore), but that made me want to go back to some of these bands I used to listen to back in the day. One of the main ones was The Bad Chapter, and I was actually a big fan of these guys, at least during the time they existed. These guys made one album and then bounced, but they were pretty cool. I remember knowing who they were, because of their vocalist, Phil Druyor. He was in the band I Am Abomination, and they were this really cool progressive metalcore band that didn’t have any screaming in their music, but they just had clean singing. Druyor’s one of the best vocalists in the scene, even today, because his voice was almost unmatched. He was right there with the best of them, whether it’s Jonny Craig, Kurt Travis, Craig Owens, Anthony Green, and all of those guys, but no one knew who he was. Druyor was also famous for being the vocalist of Attack Attack after longtime vocalist Caleb Shomo (most famously of Beartooth now) left, but the band broke up soon afterwards. The Bad Chapter seems to be where Attack Attack would have went if the band kept going, but with Druyor on vocals, and man, this record is absolutely killer.
There are a couple of things that I’m not too crazy about on the album, but I’ll get to that in a second. I love pretty much everything about this record, however, and it’s only aged like fine wine. Because pop and R&B are infiltrating metalcore these days, this record was very much ahead of its time. Songs like “Lawsuit And Tie,” “Pipe Dreams,” and “The Lowdown” really lean into that. Druyor’s vocals are perfect for pop and R&B, too, and he sells it so well, but the hooks on those songs are utterly wonderful. The way that the band is able to combine pop, R&B, and metalcore is great. The only real issues I have with this record come down to a couple of small things, namely the harsh vocals and the lyrics. The harsh vocals really aren’t as much of an issue, as they’re just not anything spectacular, but they’re not half bad, either. They’re good for what they are, but the clean vocals are so good, it’s more noticeable that the harsh vocals aren’t as good. The lyrics, however, just aren’t all that good in general. They’re not offensive, by any means, but they’re not that great. I didn’t like them when I was younger, either, but I don’t care for them too much all these years later. They make some cool points, such as talking about the record industry, and what fans want from their favorite bands, but they’re not all that great. They don’t bother me, per se, but I can see someone being turned off by the lyrics of this thing. Overall, though, I really love this record, because the vocals and instrumentation really keep it afloat. It’s a shame that this was their only album, because it’s a banger. These guys were kind of a hidden gem in the metalcore scene a decade ago, because they had a sound that people weren’t quite ready for yet. Hearing this album in 2025 is strange, because it sounds like it could have come out in the last few years, but it’s a decade old now. It’s a record that you don’t want to miss if you love a lot of metalcore bands now.
