Anterrabae - And Our Heart Beat In Our Fingertips, Without Reason

Genre rock Publisher Triple Crown Records External Links Official Anterrabae Website

In a market that has been overwhelmed by hardcore and screamo bands over the last few years, Anterrabae has made an attempt to stand out from the rest of their peers on their latest album. While their intentions were good, the album is problematic. With very little that is fresh or outstanding about the album, Anterrabae will have trouble convincing listeners it is worth spending the extra ten or fifteen bucks for an album they've essentially heard before.

It's all here, the overly-dramatic guitar riffs, the same three chords repeated over and over, the overbearing drums and, of course, the "roaaaaring" of lyrics so distorted it would take a linguist with a doctorate to understand the message. This isn't to say all hardcore bands are without originality or talent, but if Anterrabae is trying to stand out in this field, they haven't put anything on And Our Heart Beat... that will accomplish this.

Every so often there is a glimpse of possibility buried in the twelve-track album. On "Investigating the Phantom Signal" the band shows that they can go beyond the screaming and thrashing to write a haunting song that still incorporates a harder rock edge. Guitarists Ryan Poelker and Joey Spagna finally get a chance to play more than just the same three chords and everything else is toned down just enough that you can actually hear the individual musicians. Unfortunately, the album blasts right back into the same-old formula with the next track. A short break in the final track "The Hands of Christ Are Beautiful Hands" again proves that Anterrabae is capable of more than they've done on most of the album but this short instrumental section is so brief it hardly makes up for the repetitiveness of the rest of the songs.

What makes this album so frustrating is not a lack of talent, but the fact that the band seems to be OK with having put together a collection of twelve songs that are almost exactly the same. You could play "drop the needle" on almost any one of these tracks and wouldn't be able to tell one apart from the next. It is hard to say if this was due to laziness, overbearing producers or a na¯ve belief that no one would notice. Whatever the case, the album doesn't live up to Anterrabae's potential.