Counting Days - Liberated Sounds

And i said to myself "self. I'm gonna wake up early and listen to what is surely an obscure album even by Death Metal standards. Here's Liberated Sounds by Counting Days. 

I then proceeded to sleep in until 9, and it turns out this is actually Metalcore. Death Metal wouldn't be caught alive listening to this. It's pretty good though, and not even merely by Metalcore standards. What's the difference with all these granular subgenres of Extreme Metal? Well, it's subtle but it boils down to this: if you and i can play it or you're hearing it on the radio it's Metalcore, if we'd need a month of rehearsals it's Deathcore, and it just gets more virtuosic as you rise to Death Metal to Technical Death Metal. Likewise, lyrically we go from pretty much any hardcore punk topic to dead and disgusting things, to full on hellscape-nightmare gore and evil. Clean vocals only exist in Metalcore, Death and Tech are completely unintelligible without already knowing/reading the lyrics. Electronics also pretty much only exist in Metalcore, and they give it its prominent technological dystopipocalyptic narrative context. 

Now, i'm not gonna pretend like i can actually teach you to like and appreciate any of it like i do, but i can pretend like that's what i'm trying to do. One way is to look for the humor in it. I of course have a distinct advantage in that i already have an anthropomorphic skeleton lurking around the place. We can just ask him. 

Hey GREGORY! First impressions on this album. 

HMMM. WELL, I DEFINITELY WOULD NOT WANT TO BE CAUGHT IN A "MADE YOU LOOK" CONTEST WITH THAT GUY. 

I know, right? He's 20 punches deep right off the bat, and he's still got 4 in reserve. Not sure what happened to his legs, or why he's doing the Pete Weber crotch-chop, but who'd a thought i'd still have bizarre pop culture references to spare after 981 album reviews? 

As GI Joe would say, knowing is half the battle, and we already know there will be screaming and shin-splint inducing double bass drum. We also know from the band photo that they live in a haunted mansion, Thomas was some kind of Varsity athlete in high-school, and either Charlie or Bobby has huffed paint thinner at least once. 

Relax, i'm not being serious, i'm snarking on the image being conveyed. They look like they just finished filming the pilot episode of their "Paranormal Investigator Squad" mini-series for The Discovery Channel. Alex is only here because his expertise is "spreadsheets." Again, none of that is meant to be taken serious. It's my personal brand of Brechtian Alienation. You have to be conscious of the fact that it's an artificial environment and keep your disbelief planted firmly on the floor. This isn't a DIY band-funded labor of love, it's a full on glossy Mascot A&R production. One last uncomfortable one, if i knew which bottle contained the disgustingly racist concept of "token black guy" i would molotov cocktail that thing into the ocean. Lasselle Lewis has every right to be here without the garbage ideas our racist society snuck into my brain getting in the way. I don't think that way, and i don't think it's fair to have to know that other people do. 

Now obviously none of these songs will be happy or positive, but "Die Alone" has a string arrangement so that's something to look forward to. We know what it will sound like in general, so really we're just asking how each component contributes to the overall experience. Are the riffs good? Is he screaming about something that warrants screaming? If he's dead serious screaming "you can't have any of my cake," and yes i've personally heard that as an actual Death Metal lyric, that's legitimately embarrassing. Nobody has to agree with it, but it should at least make sense as something to be upset about, otherwise why scream it in the first place? That's the kind of philosophical objectivity you should bring to the house party, haunted or not. 

One last thing before we press play, it's not a perfect coincidence, but it is noticeably insane that October 21 2015 appeared on my scroll when this album was released on Oct. 16 2015. No cigar, but you can't tell me it's not horseshoes and hand grenades level close enough. Also, they haven't been active since 2017 and their websites are all dead links, so i assume they called it quits. Also Thomas Debaere has been Physical Sales Coordinator for The Orchard since 2020, and if i know Shipping (which i most certainly do) that's corporate speak for a full time job. 

Oof, no lead up to this one, just hammer smash to the face. It is good, though. Really good. Liberated sounds is actually a "face your own mortality" album. The relevent question is "death is the only true reality, so why do we make life so goddamned miserable and filled with garbage?" Yeah, that's a completely reasonable thing to scream and rage about. 

Actually, the title track is a self-persevence hype up kind of song. Sucks that more of the lyrics aren't published anywhere, and that they didn't make a longer run of it, but i for one would take this over I (wish they wouldn't) Prevail or (please don't) Bring Me the Horizon any day of the week. Then again, i can tell you why. Liberated Sounds formed as a side-project supergroup, and while that level of creative liberation and excitement very clearly shines bright on this phenomenal album, the subconscious gremlin in all of their heads was that this was and always would be a one-off project with no actual hope of a long-running future. There isn't really anything wrong with that, but i think i'd like it better if they just accepted it and marketed it for what it is. Instead, when you go read any press about it it comes across completely hollow and my inner snark monster just goes "pffffft." If instead they had just went with "this is a magical one-off thing we all wanted and had the chance to do, please enjoy," i would be all "hell yeah, you totally succeeded and it's awesome!" 

It is awesome, but it's also "we'll probably never make a second album" long. As an artistic statement is does not need to be 12 tracks long. They certainly have the chops to hold my attention through all of it, and absolutely nothing is fluff or better left unpublished, but it legitimately sounds like there's nothing they could really do musically beyond this album except something completely different. There don't need to be any more Counting Days albums, they covered everything. 

It's too perfect, and that's kind of its problem. You've liberated all the sounds guys, anything more can only be superfluous. I am Bottle, so it shouldn't come as a surprise when i rhetorically ask "what did you think would happen?" 

I suppose there's no real option, it's time to pull out the tasteless joke and bite the bullet. Next up is another one-off side collaboration, the climax in the middle of the story with 6 more albums of who knows what after it (i told you i went a bit overboard). Check out Liberated Sounds from Counting Days in the meantime. If nothing else, and in spite of my peculiar unenthusiastic rave review, it's an example of good Metalcore to give you some basis for comparison. It might still give you a headache anyway, but at least you'll understand why it's supposed to.

Nailbomb