Gwen Stacy- The Life I Know

Gwen Stacy and I met a long time ago, sometime in 2005, maybe early 06, they randomly played my small hometown of Versailles KY, in a small coffee shop to about 25 people. Upon hearing them I fell in love. Their debut E.P. comprised alot of what I love about heavy music, spuratic party rock, with very fun compositions of upbeat breakdowns, and just head bobbing metalcore, quite the exception from the tediousness of alot of their peers of the time. I immediately purchased the E.P. and carefully watched them into their rise to glory, and up front, I know them personally, they are great guys, and one of the hardest working bands in the game right now.
Their debut full length The Life in Know on Ferret has also garnered quite high expectation because of the stature of the label. Ferret has always been the standard for their genre, and rarely ever gets bands that do less than that.
The record's opener sets the tone for the entire thing. If you have heard this song, you have essentially heard most of the CD. From song to song, they seem to run together, due to the fact that the tempo stays near, if not exactly consistant. This causes the album to seem quite tedious, as the song structures also come off as a sort of recipe; it's as if the songs include these ingredients...

Big break down - filler time between breakdown/singing chourus - repeat - bridge - chorus

I guess the best part about this album is that it's production is superb, however sometimes the clean vocals fall under the mix, but for the most part, everything else is on point. Unfortunatly it just cant save the musical composition, as written all over are the words simplicity, and monotanous but mostly, and unfortunately has the record filed under mediocre.

FINAL GRADE: D+