After being blown away by She Must Burn’s self-titled EP about a year and a half ago, I was very excited to see they were back with their new album Grimoire, but sadly it feels like they climaxed with their EP because Grimoire is just a let-down in comparison.
Whilst the EP was exciting, Grimoire feels a little tired and dragged-out in comparison, and the balance between melody and aggression is skewed – there’s a lot less melody to their sound on the album and at times it just feels like She Must Burn is projecting noise at you without much thought – and although they’re not gone completely, the clean vocals and keys are like an afterthought for the most part.
The first full track of the album, The Wicked does get things off with a bang, with the screamed, bellowed and clean vocal approaches all complementing each other well, and you can’t help but feel Grimoire is off to a running start, but then it dips a little and a good chunk of the following tracks seem to have the same in-your-face format, blending into one uninteresting track as a result, so the lack of variety and individuality to She Must Burn’s sound leaves a lot to be desired – although saying that, sixth track A False Heaven, which is a purely melodic dividing track, does give the listener some breathing room before the wall of noise is thrust upon them once again.
It’s a shame because there was a lot of potential in their EP – hopefully I’ll be pleasantly surprised when it comes to their next release.
5/10
