I remember a time when it was extremely hard for a band to properly release material, cassette releases were expensive unless you recorded your own on a cheap stereo in your bedroom, vinyl releases were cheaper, but still expensive for a young band and CD releases were virtually impossible to fund. When CD Writers became popularized and the prices went down we saw bands releasing their own albums on CD. This was a good thing as it eventually lead to CD manufacturing prices dropping to about $2 per CD, not a high price for an unsigned band. Unfortunately that also opened the door for any band to manufacture large quantities of crap without putting in the hard work that builds a band into something worthwhile. Today a band could form, write 10 songs in two days, record the songs on a relatively cheap digital studio like a Boss BR-1180, rip the songs to a CDR and send them off to a manufacturer and in two weeks they’d have an album to release. Sadly, too many bands come across as if they’ve done just that.

Hymns Of The Wicked are not the extreme example, but I can only wish the band had taken more time to evolve their sound. They’re a young band—still in high school if I’m understanding the bio correctly—hailing from Pennsylvania. Lead vocalist/guitarist Shaun Collins handles most of the songwriting for the whole album, he gets a little lyrical help from the executive producer, Raymond Maclean, on a few tracks and from guest vocalist Jamie DiCiurcio on one track. I think Shaun Collins being the chief songwriter may have hurt this album. First, the songs are not fleshed out enough, some could be very good, but they come off as works-in-progress. Also, Shaun’s vocals go from OK to just plain bad. His clean singing voice isn’t bad, it’s a little weak, but with work it could be very good. On the other hand, his screams are like running your teeth down a chalkboard. They’re terrible. He sounds like a pre-pubescent kid yelling at his Mom because she’s making him do his homework and he can’t have a cookie. The album would have fared much better with a better singer.

The songs are essentially alternative rock with a strong nu-metal influence clouded by a vocalist that took too much notice of the emo-metalcore screamers of the past few years. It is possible to sing heavy without screaming, too bad Collins didn’t realize this. Never See The Sun Again begins with the song “Intro,” which is essentially a short song with lyrics, not a typical intro. Immediately you understand the problem with the vocals. It’s not a very promising intro. The rest of the album does have some decent songs, “Innocent Man” is a good song with a nice verse and a catchy chorus, even a pretty soulful solo, but the misguided use of that overdubbed scream is the song’s downfall. It’s definitely the standout track, though. “Dead Logic” could have been a great song with its use of keyboards, double bass and heavy riffing, but again the vocals are seriously flawed and severely detract from the song. “World Of Mine” wants to be a hardcore punk song, but falls flat on its face, especially with the attempted death metal vocals followed by the ska/reggae breakdown. Ridiculous. “We Call Out” starts out with some nice keyboards and some dark, metallic riffing, but the song is immediately assaulted with those damn vocals and then the song just falls apart in every possible way. The album ends with “Stigmata,” a song that comes off too much like Nirvana’s “Big Long Now” and fails to be as good, but it’s still pretty decent. The other songs on the album play in varying degrees of mediocre to bad to worse.

My suggestion for Shaun Collins and this band would be to grow as musicians/artists before releasing another album. Never See The Sun Again, while not being a good album, has potential written all over it. There’s unrealized talent coming from the mind of Collins. If he can take a step back, brush up on his playing and learn how to sing heavy without screaming from his throat then he’d be on the right path. As it stands this CD is flawed from beginning to end, it comes off like a band that prematurely released their music. Would a little incubation have helped? I’m not so sure, but it definitely wouldn’t have hurt. Given time, though, I’m confident that Collins will find his voice, so to speak.

AUDIO: Intro and Innocent Man

Note: In time these links will likely becoming outdated.