Oceans Ate Alaska - Hikari

The claims I heard about this album being a super avant-garde aproach to metalcore are quite a bit exaggerated, and there are simply a few more diverse passages among the songs with a tad more dynamic than your friend-from-high-school’s metalcore-focused band (whose music he attests is similarly hard to put into a genre). Abound are some of the cheesy and off-putting good-cop/bad-cop vocals that taint the genre already, which are only occasionally performed and woven in nicely. The few basic prog tricks the band bring into the album aren’t even that new to the genre and often only serve as a fleeting snap of the fingers for attention, incapable of actually holding that attention. Unlike another band earlier this year who practically reinvented their genre’s breakdowns, Oceans Ate Alaska play mostly generic metalcore breakdowns throughout Hikari. The song “Dead Weight”, however, is probably one of the most convincing performances on the album, with some actually seemingly intentional proggy structuring and a welcomed absence of clean vocals. Perhaps it’s partially the style and the unfitting cleanly sung melodies that rubbed me the wrong way early that’s made it hard for me to get into this album, but I felt similarly about Spencer Sotelo’s vocals when I first heard Periphery and now I love Periphery’s music and Spencer’s heartfelt performances on songs like “22 Faces”, “The Scourge”, “The Bad Thing”, and “Jetpacks Was Yes!”. I hope Oceans Ate Alaska keep exploring and maybe next time make a few more courageous breaks away from the metalcore mold.