FACT - In The Blink Of An Eye (Review)

Artist: FACT
Album: In The Blink Of An Eye
Label: Vagrant
Release Date: January 19^th
Genre: Melodic Hardcore
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Rating:

After releas­ing their well-received self-titled US debut, FACT have returned with their Japanese-only release of In The Blink Of An Eye. While the album may have done well with the under­ground scene, it was not with­out its faults, and Blink is their first attempt to rebuild their sound and fix the musi­cal incon­sis­ten­cies that flooded their pre­vi­ous release. In The Blink Of An Eye brings a new sense of cohe­sion and flair to FACT while main­tain­ing every qual­ity fans loved from their debut.

Title track, and opener, “In The Blink Of An Eye” bursts into the dynamic com­fort every FACT fan will know and love. Their orig­i­nal brand of melodic hard­core is unde­ni­able and the bro­ken English of their vocals has become some­thing of an inte­gral part of their sound. The song is sadly cut short at 2:21 and the record moves into follow-up “This Is The End,” a fast paced, tech­ni­cal track con­tin­u­ing in FACT fash­ion with heavy screams and fast drum­ming fronted by apt gui­tar work and a catchy cho­rus. Next comes what could now be FACT’s catchi­est track, and newest sin­gle, “Slip Of The Lip.” The track is drenched in upbeat, mid-tempo catch­i­ness in the cho­rus with only mildly harder verses with some rough vocals paired with a bit of melody.

With a very dynamic approach to their music, at times it may feel a bit dis­jointed, though- or sim­ply feel out of place or unwanted. While their debut suf­fered from this exper­i­men­ta­tion a lot more, Blink still holds some pit­falls. The biggest of these is the over-production of vocal­ist Hiro’s cleans. The auto-tune is more than notice­able along with the super com­pres­sion placed on it- espe­cially on “Behind A Smile”. His voice sounds like it would be beau­ti­ful, so it needs to be let out of the auto-tuned cage of 2008 and be let free in nat­ural beauty. Secondly is the Nintendo-core inter­lude now used twice on their records- “1−2” and “1−3.” While just for instru­men­tal inter­lude, it really feels like putting a cow in the chicken coupe (it doesn’t look right!). Lastly is the more than hor­ren­dous lyri­cal con­tent. While most may not be the most deci­pher­able, when you have a cho­rus’ along the likes of “Silent Night,” you can’t help but cringe. Perhaps over time Hiro will expand his English vocab­u­lary and con­cepts and give some­thing golden.

The sec­ond half of the record, fol­low­ing “1−3,” con­tains some real win­ners on it with “Risk of Disorder” and “Sunset.” The for­mer takes a very melodic route for the first bit and slides into a faster harder sec­tion for the remain­ing sec­tions of the song while the lat­ter rehashes the title track with a nice melodic hard­core, tech­ni­cally based song.

Being their sec­ond release in a short few months, In The Blink Of An Eye shows an imme­di­ate mat­u­ra­tion and focus on their music. With a less broad approach and nar­row­ing into a niche sound, FACT have a lot to prove but the means to jump that bar in the future.

Track Listing:
1. In The Blink Of An Eye
2. This Is The End
3. Slip Of The Lip
4. Silent Night
5. Dec 2
6. Part Of It All
7. 1-3
8. Behind A Smile
9. Fade
10. Risk Of Disorder
11. Goodbye To Good Morning
12. Sunset

Similar To: Dir En Grey, Strung Out

Review by: Matthew C.