Breed, Greed, Breed

With their last album Random End, we saw a radical change in Misery Inc's sound. The very Sentenced sounding vibe of their albums Suicide Serenade and Yesterday's Grave had been replaced by a more aggressive, thrashy death metal sound with a healthy dose of modern American metalcore flavorings. The melodic vocals were still ever present but the band switched to a dual lead vocalist approach, using both clean and harsh vocals along the line of bands like Three Inches Of Blood and Into Eternity. In the spring of 2007, lead vocalist Jules Naveri left the band and Tommi Niemi was brought in as a replacement to do the vocals for this album (he has since left the band as well). Besides long time vocalist Mikko Herranen, Niko Mankinen is now handling the “clean” vocals. With their newest album Breed, Greed, Breed, the evolution continues along the more aggressive thrash metal/metalcore pathway for this band with an even more "Americanized" metalcore sound that seems to have the North American market firmly in it's sights.

With each album that passes since their debut, I find myself being more an more surprised at the radical change in this band's sound. Very little of the melodic death metal style that was the focus of Random End even exists with Breed, Greed, Breed. The shift is definitely more towards a more aggressive and chaotic metalcore sound. The sound of Misery Inc. is huge. The riffs are fast and frenzied as are the breakneck tempos of some of the tracks on this album. Thrash metal riffs and lots of low end chugging are accompanied by frenzied breakdowns and Scott Ian (Anthrax) style "shoutback" vocals. There's some very cool riff breaks and shredding lead guitar work is not in short supply. Melodic clean vocals are the one thing that this band still uses in their sound that was there from the very beginning but they are mixed with the harsh growls and shouting vocal styles of Mikko Herranen. Blinded By The Power features the Anthrax style shoutback vocals with some catchy vocals and harmony third flavored riffs. The Anthrax aggression is again seen with Fall Of The Idol with it's thrash metal style yet catchy melodic chorus.

The album really shows some promise for the first half but for the last half, the songs start to show the same formula over and over again. Ticket But No Ride and Prodigal Son are attempts at a more commercial metalcore sound with lukewarm results at best. Aside from those two tracks, the rest on the last half of the album seem to be recycling the same sort of thrashy riffs, harmony thirds and the clean/harsh vocal style gets very monotonous as well. It gets to the point where everything starts to get so predictable that you just know what's coming next in almost all of the remaining tracks. Even the overall quality of songs on the last half of the album is definitely sub par. The one exception might be Candyman with it's slow and more atmospheric chugging heavy style. In a few instances, the types of melodies used for the clean vocal lines just don't fit the the aggression and overall tone of the track.

There are some strong tracks on this album and Misery Inc. really does have a solid and very heavy sound but with Breed, Greed, Breed, they seem to be all over the place from thrash metal to melodic heavy metal to American metalcore and even some remnants of the Euro death metal sound. I've been a fan of this band since I first heard them but I must admit that this new album leaves a little bitterness in my mouth. I can understand a band trying to find an audience and be successful but to make such drastic changes in style from one album to the next, it usually spells trouble. Long time fans may have a hard time with this new sound whereas they might attract an altogether new fan base because of the modern metalcore style of most of this album. Make no mistake, this album absolutely crushes in its heaviness but finds Misery Inc. at a bit of a crossroads in their career. I hope they make sound choices for the future and stick with it.