Of Mice and Men – The Flood | Album Review

Review – Billy Geary

In today’s musical climate, there is always a genre that is stagnating, where everything ‘new’ just seems to be the recycled sounds of earlier bands or even when bands do try to branch out it just sounds horrible and forced. Metalcore is probably the worst offender when it comes to this issue, with the vast majority of new bands springing up lately not really doing anything new or pushing the boundaries of their sound.

This is where the USA’s Of Mice and Men come in to the picture. Named after the classic book, the band play a brand of metalcore that tends to sacrifice originality for being insanely catchy. The Flood is the band’s second album, coming after a plethora of lineup changes (including the departure and then re-joining of vocalist Austin Carlisle) and sees a decidedly more mature side of the band. However, there are moments where Of Mice and Men slip back into the more generic and boring sound of their debut, which is quite unfortunate as when they get it right, they get it really right.

The opening few tracks of The Flood Prove to be the better cuts from the album, in particular that of ‘O.G. Loko’ and ‘Ben Threw.’ Of Mice and Men are at their best in their more aggressive moments, as the aforementioned tracks display. Guitarists Phil Manansala and Alan Ashby’s hard-hitting riffs provide the perfect folly for Carlisle to scream till his heart’s content. In fact, Carlisle’s vocals are probably the band’s biggest strength, having a somewhat impressive screaming range. His interplay with clean vocalist/bassist Shayley Bourget works quite well on songs like ‘Ohioisonfire’ and ‘Let Live.’ In particular, ‘Ohioisonfire’ provides what is probably the catchiest, and subsequent best chorus on the album. It is tracks like these that will give listeners hope that Of Mice and Men will develop into something much more that just another metalcore band.

The major gripe with The Flood is that all too often it falls back into the derivative, commercial metalcore mould. The band continually follows the same structure – screamed verse, big melodic chorus and repeat – which results in the album becoming very samey towards the end. This is quite a feat, given its very short 35-minute running time. It’s hardly all bad news though, there are plenty of great moments throughout – Bourget’s soaring vocals on ‘My Understandings’ form some of the more impressive moments on the album. Tracks like this show that when the quintet do deviate from their traditional structure, they succeed in a big way.

Despite having its faults, The Flood is an inconsistent, if not solid follow up release for Of Mice and Men. One gets the feeling that, if the band avoid any more personnel changes, by the time they release their third album all the kinks will have been ironed out and fans will have one hell of a record to contend with. Until then though, we have The Flood, which has a few decent songs to keep both fans and casual listeners interested. A promising release from a band seemingly capable of a lot more.

Review – Billy Geary

– The Flood – Of Mice & Men

– Of Mice & Men