Despite the silly band name,
Scars of Tomorrow is yet another punk band from the Thorp Records stable offering something that appears, on the surface, to be by-the-numbers punk-metal fusion, but reveals unexpected complexity when examined more closely. The band's labelmates in
How It Ends offer a single musical idea coupled with surprisingly interesting lyrical ideas;
Scars of Tomorrow offers the opposite. Lyrically, the songs are predictable when they aren't either hackneyed ("Face to face with black/Face to face with death/Into a void of emptiness") or incoherent ("Follow your breath, it's so cold/Victim of circumstance/Resides in broken dreams"). But musically, there's a strange synergy at work: roaring vocals and dense, snarling guitars repeatedly give way to chord progressions and sonic textures that come straight out of the emo tradition -- note in particular the remarkable "With Open Arms," which lasts almost five minutes and never seems to settle into a single stylistic groove, and the equally fine "TFTDC." "Arise" is another winner in a similar vein. If the lyrics are weak, it doesn't ultimately matter that much, since they're lost in the roar for the most part anyway. Recommended. ~ Rick Anderson