Band Name: Century
Album Name: Century
Best Element: The brutality of the music
Genre: Metalcore
Website: www.faithandfailure.com
Label Name: N/A
Band E-mail: band@faithandfailure.com
*Note*: When I got this album Century was unsigned. Two days ago, on August 18,
2005, they were signed to Tribunal records, the launching pad for bands such as
Atreyu, From Autumn to Ashes, He is Legend and many others.
Some albums just can’t live up to expectations. You will never hear that about
Century’s self-titled EP. This six-song EP is a brutal trip through Carson Slovak’s mind. Slovak, Century’s founder and sole member in the creation of this project, created Century after leaving his former band Armsbendback (R.I.P, Trustkill). He really decided to step away from the sound he had created with Armsbendback, creating a completely new image for himself.
For those not familiar with Armsbendback, they were a melodic hardcore band who, sounded like 4 very talented guys who all wanted to play something different. Century sounds like the band that Slovak wanted to play in.
The album opens with the track “The Fate of Arbogast”, a track that really reminds me of Poison the Well’s You Come Before You (Atlantic Records). There are the truly brutal parts that are beautifully coupled with melodic lines and scream/chants that leave the lyrics just out of the reach of complete comprehension. The EP then moves on to the more brutal metal like “Decagram” and “Maneater”. With hints of spaz-core within the guitar parts and metal-like vocals these two songs are most likely my favorites on the album.
After the brutality of the first three songs, I went into track four, “Andy
Warhol”, expecting much of the same. What I found was that Slovak had covered a David Bowie song. This showed me the true diversity of Slovak’s musical
abilities. Not only did he play every instrument and do all the vocals on this
EP, but he also showed that he could play and perform a song that wasn’t metal. A lot of people will see this song as the one low point of the album- but I see it as a wonderful demonstration of the true ability and diversity of musical tastes that Slovak possesses.
The final two tracks of the album, “The Last Neighborhood in America” and
Ellipsis”, go back to the PTW-like vocal style and use a lot of dialog within them. I’ve always been a sucker for dialog within a song and to see it used to connect songs was the final piece to the puzzle of this EP. “The Last Neighborhood in America” leads the final charge with a good bit of dialog that fades directly into “Ellipsis”, a brutal and fitting end to this EP.
This band will go far. Slovak has assembled a cast of characters to fill in on their respective instruments for live shows and in the studio. He has truly created a
quality and exciting EP to listen to. It was only fitting to end this EP with an ‘…’.
-Scott Landis
redbassist66@comcast.net