Chiodos - Illuminaudio [2010]

Imagine the Transformers without Optimus Prime. Or pizza without cheese. Neither would be any good. I expected the same thing to happen to Chiodos when lead singer Craig Owens left. I am a huge fan of all of his musical ventures, and especially of his work with Chiodos. With his departure, and the other lineup changes the band went through, I had fairly low hopes for any of Chiodos future releases. But since I enjoy Chiodos' other albums so much, I decided to give Illuminaudio a spin when it came out, and was pleasantly surprised with what I heard.

With Craig left a lot of the band's unique sound provided by his irreplaceable voice. The new vocalist, Brandon Bolmer, does very well most of the time. He makes the smart move of not trying to copy Craig's style too closely, and instead, makes the music his own. His voice still soars through the high notes, but in his own style, and he puts much more emphasis on the screams. This has both positive and negative repercussions, because while it distinguishes his vocal work from the old style, it also makes the music sound a little more generic. Some of the instrumentation suffers from the same problem, and at times the lyrical content on the album just sounds lazy (e.g. Those Who Slay Together.) The added number of breakdowns and bass-drops give parts of the album an already-been-done-by-other-post-hardcore-groups feel.

Luckily, that feeling constitutes a minor portion of the album. More often while listening to Illuminaudio, I am impressed with the band and satisfied with the music. There are songs that show Chiodos experimenting with their sound, like Notes In Constellations which shows a more melodic, mature side of the band. There are also many moments on Illuminaudio when the signature Chiodos sound of their earlier albums comes through. They are still able to adeptly include gorgeous keyboard parts into their songs better than almost any other band in the genre. One of the qualities that originally made me a Chiodos fan is the intensity of some moments in their music, and they still deliver plenty of those, such as the first moments of frantic screaming on Scaremonger and about halfway through Modern Wolf Hair. The guitar parts fly across the fretboard on Hey Zeus! and Stratovolcano Mouth, two of the most irresistible tracks, even though the latter sounds a lot like an alternate version of Thermacare.

If you listen to this album expecting the old Chiodos, you may be disappointed, but if you go in with the same open-minded attitude with which you would listen to a completely new band, Illuminaudio delivers. It has a somewhat different sound, but is still easily enjoyable. This album holds onto parts of the band's old style, and still leaves room for improvement, but also represents an immensely important moment in Chiodos' musical career. At a pivotal moment when they could have called it quits, they decided to continue making music. Illuminaudio is the rebirth of Chiodos.

Genre: Post-Hardcore

For Fans Of: Peirce The Veil, Emarosa, The Receiving End Of Sirens

Contact: Myspace

Tracklisting:

1. Illuminaudio

2. Caves

3. Love Is A Cat From Hell

4. Modern Wolf Hair

5. Notes In Constellations

6. Scaremonger

7. His Story Repeats Itself

8. Let Us Burn One

9. Hey Zeus! The Dungeon

10. Stratovolcano Mouth

11. Those Who Slay Together, Stay Together

12. Closed Eyes Still Look Forward

-T