Man, seriously....how many bands can keep sounding like this? I've listened to The Daily Grind 5 times or so, and not a goddamn thing has stood out except for the facts that a. this band sounds like 45,683,902 other bands in the deathcore movement today, and b. they also look like those bands. Predictable lows to shrieking highs in the vocals? Check. Do at least two or three members of the band have premature combovers and girl-pants? Check. Is there a plethora of triplet chug riffs coupled with hideously overplayed and annoying breakdowns for all the kids to punch air in the pit to? Check. What the fuck happened to original death metal bands????!!!! When did everyone want to shove 50 tons of "core" into their sound? Why the fuck do 6 billion teenagers think they're going to get somewhere far when their bands play the same shit????!!!! Oh wait....well, they DID get to Metalblade.

I'm not going to lie: it's not that this band is horrid sounding or weak, in the musical sense. They are horrid and weak in the copycat dime-a-dozen sense, which is probably dime-a-thousand sense by now, with all the posing and copycatting in this style. I believe the first time I heard a band like this, it was All Shall Perish, and I liked them. Then it spread, slowly, to dozens of other bands. Apparently Anima was paying attention on the flavor of the minute....when this sound spread to millions of other bands. What really douches me off is that this band has great playing ability and potential to make damn good death metal, if that's what they wanted to do.....much like, yet again, dozens of other bands in the deathcore style. The production on this album is absolutely beautiful, which pisses me off even more because it's wasted on a carbon copy. I can say this: when this fad starts to drop, Anima and probably tons of other bands who haven't wised up and either switched to playing ACTUAL death metal (Job For A Cowboy-style), or just given up to go emo like they truly want to, are going to be dropped as well.

The only reason I'll be keeping this cd is so that my friends and I can load it up (along with the other deathcore albums I have amassed doing reviews....and some of them that I bought) into a multiple disc changer, slap that bad-boy on random, bust out the booze, and play "name that deathcore band". If you get it right, no one has to drink. It'll be a surefire way to get everyone drunk and possibly forget about the fact that this subgenre has played itself out and is a parody of itself at this point, I'm sad to say. As much as I hope for an impressive next outing from this band with all of this potential, it's most likely not going to happen. This record gets a 3 out of 10 ONLY because the sound on the album is so good and the playing, though generic as FUCK, is competent.

Rating: 3 Drunk girlpant-combover-pitninjas out of 10