Track Listing

1. Face Yourself
2. The Failsafe
3. Post Collapse
4. Migrate
5. One Day I’ll Stay Home
6. Something Was Always Missing, But It Was Never You
7. Reverence Lost
8. Sword of Eyes
9. An Offering to the Insatiable Sons of God (Butcher)
10. Anchor
11. Mirrors

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67237 in Music
• Released on: 2006-08-22
• Number of discs: 1

About the Artist
Few bands can turn adversity on its head the way Misery Signals has. Following the departure of founding vocalist, Jesse Zaraska, the band rebounded in style by finding the perfect replacement in Karl Schubach. Schubach was part of an open audition that had hopefuls recording their vocals on an instrumental track available on their myspace page. The fact that Schubach is a guitarist by trade and has never sang in a band before makes the story even more remarkable. Commenting on the new guy, guitarist Ryan Morgan comments "Karl has a monstrous voice perfect for what people have enjoyed from the band in the past." Re-loaded, the band hit the Cleveland recording studio of Producer Ben Schigel (Chimaira, ZAO) for a month this spring recording their second full-length Mirrors to be released this August on Ferret Music. The band is crafting an album which they claim is even heavier than their celebrated debut Of Malice And The Magnum Heart, but also more atmospheric and ambient as well. Speaking on the significance of the title of the forthcoming second album Mirrors Ryan explains "A lot of the songs ask questions about self and how people perceive themselves and the images that they present to others." Like new age metallic surgeons Misery Signals carves through the cluttered heavy music scene and images to plant their flag in the sands of time.

Customer Reviews

Misery Signals are The best extreme band right now
First album showed such potential...And Holy crap I was right...Mirrors is a monster of an album..every song is heavy, brutal yet melodic and memorable...So much emotion was put into this album and the lyrics are top notch..Buy now....The new album CONTROLLER comes out in July ' 08 and it is even better. Support True Hardcore. For fans of Shai Hulud, Old Poison the Well, Any sort of Melodic Metal also.

Pretty and punishing
Almost all metalcore bands that want to be noticed or stay relevant nowadays probably had to abandon the genre's cookie cutter verse-chorus-breakdown song structure long ago, and come up with something fairly new or innovative to bring to the table, instead. Misery Signals does not exactly reinvent the genre, and they probably won't interest anybody who isn't already a fan of it, but they aren't content to simply conform and be just one of the crowd, either -- this is a band with a face! Thus, the Wisconsin-based quintet should have no problem turning many listeners' heads and becoming a really huge band. In fact, we could even be looking at heavy music's next big thing!

Misery Signal's second album, 2006's "Mirrors," transcends the mere "metalcore" label in that it fuses together crushing heaviness with bright melodies, odd time signatures, and very tight and technical musicianship. And unlike a lot of melodic metalcore, "Mirrors" is, first and foremost, a heavy album. It punishes the listener's ear drums relentlessly and from all angles, with pummeling, non-traditional rhythms, pounding drums, solid bass work, big, foundation-shaking breakdowns, and an impeccable, airtight interplay between the two guitarists' equally meaty, bludgeoning riffs. New singer, Karl Schubach, (who, by the way, was selected via a myspace competition after previous frontman Jesse Zaraska left the fold) is the band's biggest cliche, and his very limited and one-dimensional vocal range could be the only thing holding Misery Signals back from international greatness. In his defense, though, his beefy, full-bodied bellows (which are influenced squarely by modern day hardcore acts) do have a lot of force, power, and visceral impact, and they help to give the album its decisively edgy sound and in-your-face attitude. Overall, "Mirrors" sounds like a mix of Intronaut, Meshuggah, Hatebreed and/or Terror, and Zao, and the odd Converge influence is tossed in for good measure.

With some viscous double bass thunder, chunky, resonating power chords, livid, throat-ripping yells of "You brought this on yourself!", and a ginormous, brutally booming wall of sound, opener "Face Yourself" confidently storms through your speakers and crushes you like a bug as soon as you hit the "PLAY" button. "Reference Lost" and "Sword Of Eyes," which evoke the sound of a boulder lumbering down a mountainside, are the other heaviest tracks on offer here. Elsewhere, several of the songs --i.e. "The Failsafe," "Migrate" (which features exceptional bass playing by Kyle Johnson), and "Something Was Always Missing, But It Was Never You" (to name just a few) -- feature sections of pretty, soothing, lightly-picked strings, thus creating an excellent juxtaposition between them and their muscular, dissonant, almost skull-crushing surroundings.

Finally, there are two main highlight tracks from a melodic standpoint: "One Day I'll Stay Home" and "An Offering To The Insatiable Sons Of God (Butcher)." The former boasts the album's strongest and most infectious hook when Fall Out Boy singer, Patrick Stump, lends a bit of sweet, infectiously tuneful crooning to the chorus, giving the track a refreshingly laid-back and almost emo-ish sensibility. And the latter song features the album's most prevalent melody, a sonically stunning and richly atmospheric intro that lasts upwards of forty seconds.

Bare in mind that "Mirrors" probably isn't the type of metalcore that you are used to hearing. This is a very challenging album, and its lack of immediate hooks, melodic vocals, conventional song structures, and sing-along choruses is likely to be initially a bit frustrating for some listeners, so it will probably require several patient, repeat listens to appreciate and absorb fully. But don't give up on it, because it may not be as easy to swallow as most standard metalcore fare, but after giving it a little time to digest, it is ultimately much more satisfying.

Production is lacking
The songwriting, lyrics, new vocalist, instrumentals, EVERYTHING on this album is amazing. Too bad they didn't have Devin Townsend as a producer again. Of Malice & the Magnum Heart is still probably the best sounding album i've ever heard, ever.