IWRESTLEDABEARONCE

Hail Mary is the final album by this band, and it is the second album to have singer Courtney LaPlante. The fact that a woman can create such low and guttural vocals already makes the band stand out from their peers. Hail Mary combines mathcore, deathcore, metalcore, and even some jazz to create an experimental and Avant-garde sound, whether it be the rumbling bass, the alien sounding guitars, the vocals, or the heavy drumming.

I can't describe this album with words. The only way an individual can experience this album is to listen to the entire record. But be warned, this album is not for the light progressive rock fan or someone who is just now getting into the genre. Once you do hear it though, you really understand how original and creative the album and this band is.

With a new singer in tow, the band also seems to be shedding a lot of the weird antics in favor of more straightforward though quite technical metalcore. Some may prefer that sort of thing, but to me, the less wacky it is, the less listenable it is concerning these sort of acts. The band can certainly play, and there are a few moments that caught me off guard, such as the latter half of the best track, "Firebees", which shifts into this strange funky, jazzy bit, and the guitar solo during "Carnage Asada" left me in awe...before I realized it was performed by Steve Vai in a guest appearance, which made more sense. Many of the other tunes don't really stand out much musically, as the skillful rhythm work, harmonics and scale runs gets a bit numbing after a spell.

Singer Courtney LaPlante's harsh barks possess that whiny metalcore vibe, and while commendable I suppose for those into that style, they irritate the hell out of me. Her clean singing is smooth and in sharp contrast to her howls, and tracks like "Mind The Gap" or "Inside Job" showcase it well enough, but I personally miss the unhinged 'Bjork-on-a-bender' insanity of prior vocalist Krysta Cameron, although to be fair to Courtney, her voice probably is better suited for the direction the band is heading towards.

It's not a direction I really care to follow at this point. It might get tougher as they mature in age and style not to regret their chosen band name, and they could use a basic marketing lesson or something to learn that a decent album cover might help to some extent in attracting potential new fans and possible sales. I'm not really a metalcore fan to begin with, and only enjoyed their debut for its deranged, bastardized version of that genre to almost mocking levels. Thus for this more clinical brand of rapid metalcore, with the exception of a couple of tunes and a couple of moments, I'm pretty much done with this album.

Bands that tend to be labeled "Avant Garde" manage to play a lot of styles and put them together very impressively and flow well together. Arcturus has an operatic theme to their music, Sigh has it also combined with black metal, but IWABO only listened to Dillinger Escape Plan and decided to try to be weird just to get that label into their band. Even Sigh's vocalist claims that they didn't intend to make themselves weird, they believed that playing multiple styles of music on certain occasions fitting to the moods they are trying to express.

Also, the riffs are really nothing different from the typical deathcore I've heard and if you take away the programming, experimentation, and the keyboardist, that's exactly what they would be, except with above average vocals. There's just nothing else interesting about what they are playing to me and I could find much better listening to the keyboardist of Arcturus playing one song entirely classical than six people playing dubstep, metal, funk, electronic, and jazz with little to no knowledge of them.

1.5/10

With the first sounds of the the album opening Ulrich Firelord: Breaker Of Mountains it was clear that this was indeed the same band that I've learned to love on their 2009 album release. Even the sound production is just as gorgeous, which is something you can never take for granted from an early EP recording. The opening track is easily my favorite of the bunch since it takes me on a wild ride though layers on crashing drums and distorted guitars with another wonderful performance by Krysta Cameron on vocals. On top of that, this tune features a trance-sounding middle section that only shows that this band could write and produce excellent music even before making a full album. The only downside is the unnecessary cover of one very familiar classical piece added right towards the end of the track which gets tiresome upon repeated listens.

Alaskan Flounder Basket and Vlork: Mighty Wielder Of Sheep continue to coin Iwrestledabearonce's status as one of the most innovative new bands out there in the music business, even though neither of these performances can actually match the levels that they achieved with It's All Happening. Still Jolly After All These Years is a pretty weird compositions that sounds more like a mix between many different ideas, the same can of course be said about all of this band's material, which would have been great if they expanded on some of these directions instead of quitting less than 3 minutes into the performance. Corey Feldman Holocaust returns us to the more brutal side of things, but what were you excepting from a song featuring the name of the famous child actor Corey Feldman combined with the word Holocaust? The composition does loosen up pretty soon and the whole song can actually be labeled as one of this band's mellower moments.

Up to this point things have been pretty great. There might not been the high tops featured on It's All Happening but what we've got here could easily pass for a great early EP from a highly innovative band who are still finding their unique blend of Tech/Experimental Metal. So why would you want to destroy all this by adding a terrible remix track right at the end of it all? I literally have nothing good to say about the remixed version of Firelord Ulrich that feels completely out of place with the rest of the material and does more damage than good. These types of remixes are made strictly for the hardcore fan base who knows each of Iwrestledabearonce's songs by heart and therefore seek new thrills in the world of remixing.

**** star songs: Ulrich Firelord: Breaker Of Mountains (3:47) Alaskan Flounder Basket (2:45) Vlork: Mighty Wielder Of Sheep (4:49) Corey Feldman Holocaust (4:04)

*** star songs: Still Jolly After All These Years (2:40)

** star songs: Firelord Ulrich (Remix By Dada Yakuza) (5:40)

About a year ago when I played the game and stumbled on a weird sounding band called Iwrestledabearonce (or I/wrestled/a/bear/once) it felt like the group had a sense of humor so I immediately looked them up and discovered It's All Happening. The first sounds of You Ain't No Family really caught me by surprise since the description said that this was Avant-garde metal. There are a few instances where Iwrestledabearonce sound like Unexpect but the overall feel is more similar to bands like Protest The Hero and especially Between The Buried And Me. So you can definitely expect loud distorted electric guitar riffs and guttural vocals, but the new twist is that the vocalist is called Krysta Cameron! Even though I have heard other female death metal singers like Angela Gossow from Arch Enemy doing this before I still found Krysta Cameron's performance mighty impressive because she also manages to throw in a few clean vocal moments where she almost sounds like a mix between Dagmar Krause and Björk!

The opening track covers a lot of ground over its mere 4 minute course and ends with a completely unexpected Country themed outro. That's only one of the many twists that Iwrestledabearonce have in store on this debut album and the followup White Water In The Morning takes things even further with an electronic beat that comes out of nowhere half through the performance. Danger In The Manger is a personal favorite of mine because it mixes in so many different themes and styles while keeping itself at only 2:20 minute mark! Tastes Like Kevin Bacon adds a full fledged disco beat to the otherwise very heavy sounding grindcore composition but there are many other surprises further on into the track. I might as well stop my song-by-song description since I don't intend to give away all the goodies that are embedded into this heavily condensed album.

It's been almost a year since I listened to It's All Happening for the first time and the album has received quite a few revisits from me since then. The experience might be considered too short for a studio release with only 33 minutes of material to back it up, but that's actually a good thing since the album automatically invites itself on my playlist without making me want to consider whether I actually want to listen to Tech Metal at the time. It's All Happening is an excellent album that I can easily recommend to any prog rock music collection that wants to keep itself with the time and invest into some young talent. I will definitely keep my eyes and ears open for anything new that will surface from the Iwrestledabearonce camp any time in the future since this unpolished diamond can only get better from here on!

***** star songs: You Ain't No Family (3:46) Danger In The Manger (2:20) The Cat's Pajamas (3:23) See You In Shell (3:22)

**** star songs: White Water In The Morning (3:51) I'm Cold And There Are Wolves After Me (2:59) Tastes Like Kevin Bacon (3:20) Pazuzu For The Win (4:01) Black-Eyed Bush (2:28) Eli Cash Vs. The Godless Savages (3:56)