Bayview Suspect // It's Pronounced Nucular

Song: It's Pronounced Nucular

Band: Bayview Suspect Location: Perth Date of release: 24/1/2017 Genre: Groovy Deathcore Reviewer: Ariss Quartermain For Fans Of: White Chapel, Our Anchored Hearts, Lamb Of God

What’s up guys! Ariss here today, reviewing, “It’s Pronounced Nucular”, a single released by Bayview Suspect. The gang from Perth released the song in January 2017 on Bandcamp, available for free download with an optional “name your price” donation. The band has dubbed their music as a form of Melodic/Groove metal, which is evident throughout this song. Their sort of music should be checked out by anybody who loves that Lamb Of God groove style of riffs and melodies, paired with deathcore style vocals, a la White Chapel or Our Anchored Hearts.

The vocals are fairly well trained for the style of music they are going for. The vocalist is able to transition between speaking/singing and screaming fairly smoothly. From what I can hear, the vocal variety and range are all available to the singer, however, there seems to be no reasoning for the selection of a certain scream, ending in a choppy/changey sort of vocal feel at times. I believe that this is a song-writing issue, where they know that it needs to be changed up to be more exciting. Overall, great vocalist with a great set of tools, that could improve on his placement and flow to create more exciting and technical songs.

The guitarist/s are technically sound and can obviously write and perform intricate melodies. The rhythmic sections are fairly straightforward, but they definitely get your head bobbin’ and your feet bouncin’. However, it seems as if they separated melodic sections from rhythmic sections, which I believe takes away from the melodic intricacies of the guitars. I’d love to see melodies implemented together with the rhythmic guitar sections more, this again to me is a song-writing issue. I think the tone is a bit too old-school for me, it seems reminiscent of that old metal style of music, which can make a guitar section seem over-done, however, it definitely works in certain sections where it’s needed, it can just make a lot of sections seem too old-school solo-ey.

The Bass seems to be drowned completely out by the cutting tones of the guitars. To me, this could be because of 2 separate reasons:

1. The music is heavily melodic based and the bass doesn’t have much of a melodic role or spotlight in their style of music.

2. The mixing became an issue and the bass wasn’t considered enough.

This takes away from the thickness in a lot of the sections, making it almost sound too, “airy”, for lack of a better word. I truly believe that the bottom end could produce a base-line for the melodies and rhythms to work off if the bass was more strongly present.

Regardless, when I do hear the bass it seems very simple and as if the instrument is simply there for the sake of it being there. I think the music would benefit hugely by implementing stronger bass sections, mixing and even throwing in some melodic bass, rather than following the root notes in that old-school bass fashion.

The drumming is simple and straight-forward, with great highlighted fills when they’re needed in the song. I think the drumming is the most well-written part of the song from a song-writing perspective. It’s simple and bouncy when it needs to be, and hectic when it needs to be. In saying this, it could definitely be improved on. A lot of the fills are simple and sometimes the simple on-beat cymbals can become too repetitive. So, in saying this, I believe they’ve got the right idea about what to do with the drums in each section but could write stronger drum sections in each part.

Personally, I believe the lyrics are pretty dated for 2017, however, this genre of music is pretty typical of this sort of lyricism. I think the lyrics fit the song well for what it is, but they could definitely expand their lyrical horizons by exploring different topics and themes, as well as using rhetoric that is atypical of the style of music.

Overall, the song gets you moving, it gets you bobbing and familiar with each section easily. However, I think it lacks depth in a lot of ways, which I believe isn’t due to the instrumental abilities of the band members, but more so the song-writing aspect of their music. It can feel chopped and changed too much in certain instruments and sections without any real reasoning or flow. I believe that if these guys work on their song-writing abilities, they’ll have no trouble creating some incredibly exciting music that is groovy and that you can bounce around to.

Vocals: 7/10 Guitars: 6.5/10 Bass: 5/10 Drums: 7.5/10 Lyrics: 6/10 Mixing: 6/10 Song-writing: 5.5/10 Replayability: 5/10 Overall Song Quality: 5.5/10 Complexity: 5/10

Overall: 5.9/10, High Average, good technical skills and instrumental abilities that lack a strong musical song-writing direction. Lacks complexity, but definitely makes up for it with a sound that makes your head bounce.

Personal Enjoyment: 4/10, I personally don’t enjoy this genre of music very much, but the bands that do grab my attention in this genre are either extremely complex or extremely groovy bands. I found this to be too rhythmic and simple when it was rhythmic, and not complex enough when it was time to be complex. But, this is my personal opinion and I generally don’t enjoy this style of music very often.

P.S My scores work on a simple basis. 4-6 scores are around average for the criteria we use to review music.

#BayviewSuspect #Whitechapel #OurAnchoredHearts #LambOfGod