To The Rats And WolvesCheap Love

The third addition to the To The Rats And Wolves catalogue, Cheap Love, isn’t so much a metalcore offering as it is a switch-it-off-ering.

MORE: EXCLUSIVE: OCEAN GROVE: We’re Going To Be There For Anyone Who’s There For Us // BRING ME THE HORIZON: From Sheffield with Amo

Like a C-grade and early Bring Me The Horizon, the German outfit teeter on the edge of abysmal, with poor production, poor vocals, and an overreaching ambition in melodies.

Title track Cheap Love is an incoherent mess at best, attempts to blend 80s pop nuances with post-hardcore screaming, electronic runs and heavy beat downs make for wishy-washy listening. The song is saved only by its fun lyrics. So much of Cheap Love sounds like TTRAW trying to decide on which direction to go sonically, trying their hand at a little of everything–hip-hop, rap, post-hardcore, punk-rock–and they aren’t necessarily qualified to venture into these areas. When they do, they’re only waving the wishy-washy flag higher, Therapy, All The Things (teetering on the edge of emo), and Cure holding down the unfortunate fort.

… at times you certainly hear the suppressed potential in this album …

The thing is, once you hit Look What You Made Us Do, TTRAW are actually showing signs of coherent, nay, enjoyable music, somehow merging all those influences to make an interesting and reasonable sound, even if the lyrics are some strange Taylor Swift/Nikki Sixx hybrid.

It’s sad to say, because at times you certainly hear the suppressed potential in this album and it’s absolutely flooring to know that it took the band 18 months to write it, because if they put out another release like this you can be sure their name will fade from memory pretty fast.

STANDOUT TRACKS: Therapy, Friendz, Look What You Made Us Do
STICK THIS NEXT TO: Asking Alexandria, We Came As Romans, Miss May I