Review: Third & Delaware - Generations

Third and Delaware is a Metalcore influenced modern metal act who just came out with their new E.P., Generations.

The album features 5 songs, starting with "Innocent By Association",which features some cool atmospheric keyboards.

Other highlights include the song "Roads in Antarctica", which features clean sections alternating between the breakdown metal sections.

Like many modern metal artists, the band alternates between the Metalcore scream and a cleaner vocal sound, featuring the melodious sections and hooks. Like a lot of other bands in the field, it also does not betray many of the modern Metalcore's recalling of 90's Gothenburg Metal bands like In Flames and Dark Tranquility. 

However, this band only uses scant parts discarded from those influences, after all that movement happened over 20 years. The first thing I found myself thinking is that, we've been here before. 

Some of the melodic ideas appealed to me, and the clean vocals were pleasant, but did not do much to stand out in the sea.

It's always a contentious dispute within the metal community about the "cleaner" parts of Metalcore vocals- seemingly, the parts come from melodic Punk and Hardcore rather than Dio or Biff Byford, forsaking many of the trappings or influence that come from the metal genre's vocal tradition.

Needless to say, it has more in common with bands from the 90's incarnation of Nitro or Epitaph records and there's nothing wrong with that when done well. 

It's just that when it's done generically and to fit the commercial mold is when it can get lost in the shuffle. The exceptions to this genre are singers like Matt Heafy, who is more along the lines of James Hetfield or Ihsahn when constructing his vocals (even if on recent albums he's also exhibited a slightly annoying David Draiman influence, well possibly a little bit)  at least on past Trivium albums, or Shadow's Falls' whose clean vocals always reminded me of the mid 80's cleaner voiced singers in thrash metal almost showing the vocal attitude of being a lower pitched version of someone like Joey Belladonna at times.

On the other end of “Metalcore” vocals you also have Between the Buried and Me and Job For A Cowboy's more extreme vocals sounding more and more like the extreme vocals of yesteryear on each subsequent album. This I admittedly prefer, because a lot of times the Metalcore “Scream” can sound like some demon possessed fratboy rather than an actual demon!

The song "Heart of Fire" featured a more groovy riff than before, and seems to be faster than the previous songs for once, and the riffs make this a far more enjoyable song than the prior ones. Also a more guttural part to some of the extreme vocal sections makes for a refreshing change.

This band has professional sound and production, you can hear the instruments all clearly as day, and even the bass guitar is clear in the mix (something which in this style of metal isn't always the case). The promise is there, if they can grow beyond their influences and do something a bit more daring next time around, or with a more conentrated effort to stand out.

You can find out more about Third & Delaware from the following links:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thirdanddelaware
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/3rdanddelaware
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/thirdanddelawareband
Soundcloud: http://www.soundcloud.com/thirdanddelaware