Haste The Day have finally returned with their indie-gogo funded album, Coward. It's only been about a year since their reformation and they have been working hard on tour and in the studio since. Let's see if it was a good idea to reunite for another album.
Whenever I first picked up this album, all I could think is: I hope the mix of unclean and clean are as good as they usually are. Jumping straight into the album, I hadn't noticed I had the album shuffled. I was greeted with the 8th track "Reconcile". This beautiful instrumental track should have been the opener other than the song "Begin". The song stops around the 2 minute mark to allow some screaming in the background being drowned out by the instruments. Listening to this song got me ready to hear all of the more intense songs on the album.
The first song I ended up hearing with decipherable lyrics was the 2nd track "Take". As the song came on I noticed one thing. What had happened to all the usual catchy choruses Haste The Day was known for? The only hint of a chorus we get is "We know who you are and we know where you came from". It was very unexpectable as was the rest of the album. My favorite off of the album was "World" which just had complete balance with instruments and vocals to create a good song to relax to.
Looking at the rest of the album, all of the songs could definitely start a circle pit and get the crowd going live. Although, the guitars are a little immature sounding, they still maintain the heaviness. The unclean vocals aren't as good as they used to be, but you can tell Jimmy Ryan (the vocalist) has put some strain on his vocal cords. Overall I'm going to give this album a 7.5 out of 10 stars. It's not as good as past Haste The Day releases, but it is definitely jammable and past fans will enjoy it all.