For Today - Ekklesia

Rating

single star

RIYL

War of Ages
Sleeping Giant
Emmure
It Dies Today

Release Date

04/01/2008

Label

Facedown Records

Tracklist

1. Intro
2. Infantry
3. Redemption
4. Agape
5. Never Lose Sight of The Goals
6. Instrumental
7. Words of Hope
8. Ready For The Fight
9. A Higher Standard
10. With A Passion Burning

Users Rating

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3 ratings

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Recent Ratings

It’s always fun to read the fluff that labels or promoters provide to retailers and media outlets to hype up a band and get people to buy their releases. Reading the blurb Smartpunk has up about this album, you’d think it would be this year's metalcore masterpiece. “Music is a catalyst and For Today uses their August Burns Red meets Between the Buried and Me sound to spread their message across the nation.” Those are two pretty talented heavyweight bands to compare For Today to and, as you would suspect, they are no where in the same league as either of those groups. All that For Today provide the musical world is yet another dosage of faceless, competently executed, Jesus-centric, Hot Topic approved mallcore.

How bland can this band possibly get? For Today manage to combine together the most generic elements of some of the more boring bands in the metalcore realm. There’s the open chord chugging that is blatantly lifted from It Dies Today that appears in more than a few songs, “A Higher Standard” being the main offender. Then there are the strangled screams of Mattie Montgomery, which are some of the most forced screams to be heard in quite some time. The band’s growls are passable and the occasional quasi-melodic vocals are decent, however, but that's not saying much. Almost all of the breakdowns are standard chugga-chugga messes that seem to fill in parts of songs where the band seemed to run out of ideas. The melodic guitar leads feel like they simply aped Means or Life in Your Way while the few Gothenburg moments are totally uninspired.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of positives for Ekklesia. In fact, there are even more negatives than those pointed out above. Try reading the lyrics without pissing your pants laughing. My favorite set of lyrics comes from the song “Never Lose Sight of the Goals”. Check them out: “I lift my prayers to you father / bring us to our knees / let me hear your voice in this time of need / and take this lust away from me / Ride ‘em cowboy!” What... The... Hell?!?! Where the wickity whack did “Ride ‘em cowboy” come from? Last time I checked Jesus was a carpenter, not a cowpoke on a dude ranch. Oh wait, there’s some even better Sunday morning praise lyrics to be found on “Words of Hope”. They go a little something like this, “For if we call on God, it’s clear / he has made it simple / his eternal power and divine nature is clearly seen.” Holy freakin’ Bible thumping, Batman. It’s such a comical dissonance to hear the Sunday school lyrics being growled out by a grown man. Being spiritual and Christian is fine, but being this outright preachy is just beyond annoying.

Ok, so as I was saying, not a lot of positives to note for this band. Let’s see, what can we find… ummm... as I mentioned in the opening paragraph, the band competently executes what they’re playing. That’s something, right? And I’m sure these guys get the pit ninjas picking up change like nobody’s business, but then again, what metalcore band doesn’t nowadays? The members of For Today are probably great people… unfortunately, I’m reviewing their music instead of their moral character. *Sigh* I got nothing. This is generic junk. Sorry, I couldn’t hold it back any longer. It's the truth.

--Rick Gebhardt

Author

Rick Gebhardt
Last updated: 09/29/2009 08:59PM

Comments

Chris Conlan
04/03/2008
02:50PM
Age: 27
Location
Dubuque
Haven't listened to the entire album, but from the songs I heard it did nothing for me.

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M.J.Austin
04/03/2008
03:08PM
Location
Dallas, Texas
-- Check them out: “I lift my prayers to you father / bring us to our knees / let me hear your voice in this time of need / and take this lust away from me / Ride ‘em cowboy!” What... The... Hell?!?! Where the wickity whack did “Ride ‘em cowboy” come from? Last time I checked Jesus was a carpenter, not a cowpoke on a dude ranch. --

Could not stop laughing when I read this.
Bells and Whistles
04/03/2008
05:30PM
Location
Edmonton, AB
yuck... the 2 songs i heard were putrid
KrisB
04/03/2008
07:40PM
it seems like there trying to do the august burns red guitar riffs, failing miserably ending upside down in a ditch, they should consider writing new lyrics, just when i thought bring the horizon had bad enough lyrics

My Name is Kris
I have terrrible grammmer punctuaction and speling forgive my genioussness

monkeybars
04/03/2008
08:26PM
Age: 25
Location
Markham, ON
M.J.Austin
-- Check them out: “I lift my prayers to you father / bring us to our knees / let me hear your voice in this time of need / and take this lust away from me / Ride ‘em cowboy!” What... The... Hell?!?! Where the wickity whack did “Ride ‘em cowboy” come from? Last time I checked Jesus was a carpenter, not a cowpoke on a dude ranch. --

Could not stop laughing when I read this.

Maybe they aren't religious, but were just looking to get signed by some witless Christian label...

P.S. This is what the alphabet would look like if you removed Q and R.

NapalmTheChildren
04/04/2008
12:30PM
Location
Jersey / Raleigh
holy shit this was horrible. i knew that it was gunna be really really bad when i saw the picture of those tools holding axes and chainsaws. Gwar isnt even that cheesy.
Spartan E7
04/07/2008
10:18AM
Age: 25
Location
Infinitely Inwards
Fuck...this album is so unbelievably shitty, it deserved two curses. I think it would be humorous if these guys attempt to write hate mail to Rick for the review.

Ever Forthright - Ever Forthright
Fallujah - The Harvest Wombs
The New Law - The Fifty Year Storm
The Mars Volta - Noqtourniqet
Aborted - Global Flatline
Spawn of Possession - Incurso
Crippled Black Phoenix - (Mankind)The Crafty Ape

jared
04/07/2008
10:53AM
Age: 30
Location
Minneapolis, MN
If you know me, then you know I think religion is a bunch of bullshit. That said, these guys aren't as bad as all the comments they're getting here.

I saw them at a little venue opening in Buffalo, MN last summer and I was throughly impressed with the guitarists and drummer. They can shred, that's for sure. Their drummer was also pretty damn good and he hits hard.

I'm with you all on the lyrics though. They are pretty bad. Also, I don't know if this changes anyones opinion, but they had a different vocalist when I saw them. Chances are their previous guy wrote all these lyrics, maybe there's hope for a little less sunday school stuff, as Rick put it, on their newer material.

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meandyou
04/17/2008
07:58AM
i say rmgebhardt should stop reviewing, im not saying these guys are great, but you give them a score of 1, and give be your own pet a 4 1/2 out of 5? if people went off your reviews on which things to buy, they would be deeply dissapointed
monkeybars
04/17/2008
08:09AM
Age: 25
Location
Markham, ON
Um... First Rick gave this a 1, not a 0. Second, he didn't review BYOP. Third, I would be very happy buying BYOP, and very disappointed buying this.

P.S. This is what the alphabet would look like if you removed Q and R.

Rick Gebhardt
04/17/2008
08:40AM
Age: 31
Location
Minnesota
Hey meandyou, I got something for ya...

Find me EVERYWHERE:

meandyou
04/18/2008
09:56PM
ok he posted it, he didnt review it, either way he would have given it the same if not better, i never said he gave a 0, i said 1, nice comeback, just get it, you cant review worth anything