A City Serene - The Widows Walk
Rating
RIYL
We Came As RomansA Skylit Drive
Brighter Than a Thousand Suns
Everyone Dies in Utah
Release Date
08/09/2011
Label
Self ReleasedTracklist
01. Don't Call It a Comeback02. Hello Nightmare
03. The Wishing Well
04. Memoria
05. We Are Dreamer
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It’s amazing what good marketing and a solid work ethic can accomplish. A City Serene, with an EP under their belts, are sitting at around 11,000 likes on Facebook as I type this sentence; whereas freshly reunited Life in Your Way, for example, having just released Kingdoms after several successful full-lengths, have around 9,300. I’m not going to play the “Who Deserves It More?” game, because this comparison is unfair, but let me say that A City Serene’s well-polished promotions attack set my expectations pretty high. They’ve got all the right pages set up across the wide universe of social media. They’ve got fresh promo pics. They’ve removed all traces of older recorded material from their Facebook page. It’s clear they’re playing for keeps with the debut of The Widows Walk.
The important question is, then, how does it sound? And that’s the part where I scratch my head and search for a polite word or two with my mouth a little ajar and offer, “Disappointing... Mediocre?” For a band that promises to be post-hardcore/dubstep/screamo, a few minutes worth of The Widows Walk confirms A City Serene as yet another keyboardcore band masquerading as a band who are doing something more interesting. Maybe I’m just spoiled by the new Lights album, but when I see a dubstep tag, during a song I expect to hear more wubs than I can count on one hand. For the most part, the “dubstep” is divorced from the other song structures—hell, every song feels modular, like you could break them apart into sections and mix and match chugga parts, clean parts, breakdowns, and the few bits of chuggastep.
All questionable modulated basslines aside, as a post-hardcore outfit, A City Serene are capable if not formulaic. They can write a damn catchy track, though it’s obvious that vocalist Carly Baker is the diamond in this rough. I can’t say the same about Nick DiTomas’ screams, which come off as either a bear with hay fever or some sort of angry miniature gargoyle. Neither really complement the music. A typical song on The Widows Walk will be nearly unlistenable verses with more chugga than a choo-choo, a chorus with delayed guitar saved by Baker’s golden pipes, and then a bridge built around a couple wobbles and some ill-fated growls and annoying highs. Stop me if you’ve heard this song already on a Rise Records release this year.
You know those really difficult songs on Guitar Hero, where you watch your rock meter plummet during the crazy hammer-on sections and then shoot right back up when you get to the easy chorus with a lot of held notes so you can wiggle the shit out of your whammy bar and spin your guitar around your back like Botch and everything? That’s kind of how listening to The Widows Walk is, except the meter that’s rising and falling is your own will to self-harm.
But I’ve been harsh. It’s not like A City Serene are Design the Skyline or anything that drastic. They’re a fledgling post-hardcore outfit with a lot to learn, but a huge fanbase to back them up while they do it. I often talk about how bloated the post-hardcore/screamo/whatever scene is and how bands have to find a way to set themselves apart. As far as The Widows Walk goes, A City Serene aren’t quite there yet musically, but if they’re rocking a following 11,000-strong, they’re obviously doing something right. Here’s to their perseverance, and here’s to hoping their next release blows me away.
--Zach Roth
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