What's this? A badass bunch of rugged outdoorsmen rockers terrorizing the streets of Tinsel Town under the promisingly roughneck moniker of
All Hail the Yeti
? Well, their song titles include "Deep Creek," "Suicide Woods," and "Axe Murder Hollow," for Pete's sake, so the potential for an intriguing musical travelogue through Deliverance country certainly appears likely. Unfortunately, upon further review, what follows places listeners on the, ahem, receiving end of the Deliverance experience...if you catch the drift? True, the aforementioned tracks and more, such as "I Am Wendigod" and "Axe Murder Hollow," back up the genuine mountain fables in their lyrics with a suitably intense, moderately compelling mix of metal and hardcore. But before too long (aptly named second song "When the Sky Falls," to be precise), all of this backwoods imagery and anti-establishment attitude is undone by a series of all too common and entirely urban musical hallmarks: namely, metalcore's familiar breakdowns and rhythmic attack, nu-metal's white-boy rapping, and screamo's twi vocals and bitch-and-moan lyrics. Lame. In the bandmembers' defense, they do appear motivated to mature beyond these genetic proclivities -- seemingly ingrained into anyone born within spitting distance of Orange County -- now and then, particularly in the slow-burning tempo, enhanced melodicism, and snatches of movie dialog found in "After the Great Fire" (the bogus harmonica camouflage of "The Art of Mourning" doesn't count). But as long as there remains a fair quantity of mainstream mallcore cliches (see "Bloodguilt," "Judas Cradle," etc.),
will be fighting a tide of critical prejudice, even if less discerning young consumers agree to eat up this swill, so long as it impresses preteen goth girls. The choice is theirs: keep churning out shallow, basic cable approximations of what the Discovery Channel could teach them, or head into the wilderness themselves in search of rarer, more mysterious sounds to inspire them. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia