Music Review: Atreyu Congregation Of The Damned

Atreyu is an orange county California metal-core band that was one of the first mainstream groups of their genre. Their newest album Congregation Of The Damned is a departure from the normal staples of the metal-core genre, if anything it resonates more with a classic rock sound then a metal or hardcore one. In my personal opinion the album is extremely close in its sound to Alexisonfire's Old Crow's Young Cardinals released earlier this year, the scratchy vocals and more rock oriented guitar tone match up almost perfectly. However while this could be seen as a positive comparison, this album simply made me want to listen to OCYC and not Atreyu. While I cannot deny the band's success and their groundbreaking career, I feel as if their newest album may show that if they really want to renew their popularity they may want to fall back and augment what they were good at, opposed to imitating a popular sound. The album is decent for what it is, however for a band as well received as Atreyu it is in my opinion a dissapointment.