L.A., California's Emo-core offering Autumn Black have come at us again with more of the same. When I first reviewed this band in 07 for "Beneath The Shadows", I recall thinking "wow, these guys look like trendy posing scenesters", and then I realized, that when I played the cd...I was correct. In all fairness, they have their catchy moments, a lot of the melodies and acoustic portions of this band's music can be very tasteful and appeasing to the ear. However, I HAVE to lump this band in with the legions of mascara wearing douches who have trampled across the metal scene within the last 6 years or so, in the name of good taste. The vocals are predictably emo-coreish, with some variance - meaning the variance that is allowed when you're married to that particular style. We have, let's see....monotone mid-range screamo inter-woven with very EMO style cleans.We have guitars that focus more on melody and simplicity than say...melody and intricate/accomplished playing. We have bass that plods along with the guitars, blandly. Uninteresting drumming that is mid-tempo in just about every way possible, even when utilizing double bass. And we have the haircuts, scene styles, girlpants, earplugs, and premature comb-overs, OH MY!!!!!

But wait, that's only the negative side of things. I like to look at most albums on both sides of the coin and let the reader choose which one he prefers when dealing with albums of this nature. When kept in context, the album actually DOES sound good for what it is. Simplicity in melody and heaviness, when it is the goal of a band to accomplish this, is success in art. Whatever motivations behind that may be I can only theorize (regarding trendiness), but only the artists can say. I believe that if they leaned more on their clean vocals (I know, I know...) that they would make much more of a statement musically, as a good deal of the clean styles are pretty decent. I believe that this band is not untalented, I do not think that they lack the capacity to make very good music, but I do believe if they stepped away from certain aspects of their games on their first two records and just went into a more "open" direction, that they could really do some good things, musically. "The Unborn Tragedy", however, shows only a platform for this. The next move is theirs to make, but if the lack of variance in song styles is the same as on this and "Beneath The Shadows", don't even spend your money.