CoC : Cursed - III: Architects of Troubled Sleep : Review

Cursed - _III: Architects of Troubled Sleep_
(Goodfellow Records, 2008)
by: Jeremy Ulrey (7 out of 10)

Cursed are a tricky proposition, that melange of disparate influences which is at once laudable and frequently indicative of a band smothering themselves in an overly ambitious attempt to combine all those flavors into a new one. At once punk inflected (though grind more so than metalcore), sludge worshipful and noise obsessed, _III: Architects of Troubled Sleep_ is an odd little 35 minutes, the initial rattling in the engine not dissuading the band from putting the pedal to the floor in defiance; and then, five songs in, "Friends in the Music Business" slams on the brakes and wallows in tar pit doom for five minutes. Just as quickly, "Into the Hive" gets the pulse racing once again, only for the title track to sweep in less than three minutes later and drop you right back in the quagmire. The pattern repeats and reverses all the way up until the final track, "Gutters", which relents on the rage altogether and mires itself in a mournful dirge sans vocals which carries on for fully 20% of the album's running time. While not quite the kind of face only a mother could love, _III_ walks a teetering imbalance between scatterbrained vision and simple ADD.

Contact: http://www.your-funeral.com

(article published 13/7/2008)