Review: Currents - The Way It Ends
Connecticut natives Currents have been one of the driving forces of the modern metalcore sound over the past several years alongside bands like Fit For A King and Wage War. Through the release of three records the band has garnered widespread buzz in the metalcore scene and has been projected as one of the future driving forces of the genre. With a mix of August Burns Red style melodic passages and crushingly heavy sections more in line with deathcore, the band has built a loyal fandom. Now with their newest effort The Way It Ends I’m expecting to see the begging of the maturation and evolution.
The true opening track after the intro, A Flag To Wave is perhaps the catchiest chorus the band has written to date with a strong progressive element to it. The following track Poverty of Self is the heaviest on the album and is certain to be perhaps the biggest fan pleaser on this album with pounding rhythm and smashing breakdown. Monsters, which was also a single, demonstrates the two sides of Currents quite well weaving between a newfound stronger reliance on atmosphere and melody along with the bands signature heaviness.
At this point in the record I feel the need to address the large amount of negative response this record has gotten with many calling it boring and softer. It’s difficult to understand what fans are looking for at times. Bands like Currents, Fit For A King and more understandably Wage War, have all come under fire recently for stylistic changes with fans claiming a more commercial approach. Personally at least in the cases of Fit For A King and Currents, I don’t understand the criticism. If fans are focused so much so on heaviness, why aren’t they just listening to deathcore?
Regardless, the album moves on with tracks Let Me Leave and Kill The Ache. It’s worth noting the sadness marked across this album. It’s difficult not to feel the genuine emotion painted all over this record. Conveying emotion in a genuine way is something Currents has always excelled at and they’re album to use different approaches musically to put forth a wide range of emotions including but not limited to sadness, sorrow, anger, hope, and pain. I really enjoy the scream singing vocal approach used on several tracks, somewhat reminiscent to Fit For An Autopsy.
Currents may have focused more on a bleak atmosphere on The Way It Ends but they did drop us several satisfying breakdowns, just listen to Second Skin for proof. I’ve read some chatter that many felt this record was a bit too long and while I can’t completely disagree, I don’t feel as though there’s any blatantly obvious track to remove from the LP. Even the album closer, Better Days, is one of the strongest in the record with some very well arranged musical diversity.
To bring things to a close, is The Way It Ends an album of the year contender like I once anticipated? Perhaps not, but it’s much better than some of the initial reviews I read and I think it can possibly land in the top 10 on this years album rankings. The band did experiment to cold atmospheres much more than I had anticipated but I don’t think that was much of a problem because they created good music to support it. Like I mentioned previously, if all you want is heaviness from your metalcore, there’s a thing called deathcore. Currents is quickly becoming one of the more consistent bands in this scene and I look forward to what their future holds. The Way It Ends gets 4 out of 5 stars from us