Band:	Quartered
Album:	Eyes And Ears
Style:	Metalcore
Release date:	October 2014

01. Blink Blink Flash
02. Call Me Crazy
03. Violent Love
04. Speak Of The Devil
05. She Sees Colour
06. Take Me There Tonight
07. Echoes
08. Ricochet

For exhibiting some of the best aspects of metal, metalcore really seems to be a damned treacherous sound to pull off right. It's hit-or-miss, really. What could be a mix of intimate aggression coupled with digestible melody all too frequently goes way off the rails into whiny, prepubescent pandering territory. Think Protest The Hero and The Dillinger Escape Plan versus Bullet For My Valentine and As I Lay Dying. Quartered is one of the few bands to fall smack-dab between the two.

The line drawn here is what Quartered are attempting compared to what they actually sound like. The pseudo-progressive nature of Eyes And Ears definitely implies these guys are going the more respectable route; attempting something along the lines of Protest The Hero in forward-thinking song writing. It's certainly not the super predictable, sugary sound of pop metalcore, but to a certain extent, they've come short of pulling off the same musical contortion-ism P.T.H. or D.E.P. do. For better or worse, they're sitting in a pretty unremarkable middle-ground.

The problem is that everything feels so segmented, cut-and-dry when it comes to mood on Eyes And Ears. It's either pounding anger, or melancholy brooding. It's like they've attached these two settings to your average light switch. There's no charging optimism, nor is there quiet anger, no gray areas or cross-pollination in tone. So while the actual structure of the songs may be atypical, the lack of depth and dimensions makes Eyes And Ears pretty predictable by the time track three rolls along.

Eyes And Ears is certainly a cut above a lot of the crappy metalcore that's been shoved down your ear-holes in the past, unfortunately you can't help but thinking of Quartered as a poor man's version of a few previously mentioned bands.