As Likely As Not – Stand Up and Nerve (2011)

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Hailing from Italy on The Execution Kollective Records today we have As Likely As Not and their debut full-length “Stand Up and Nerve”. Labeled as a mixture of Melodic Death and Metalcore, the band delivers a somewhat uninspired release that bridges both genres but fails to deliver in the important aspects.

The band does a solid job in not being too Metalcore, but they also forget some of the important elements of Melodic Death Metal, like the killer guitar work and wide variety of blazing riffs that other bands tend to focus on. While “Stand Up and Nerve” is not the best album ever, it has some moments and shows some promise from this young band.

Right off the bat you will notice that Andrea Spini’s vocals are not the best, and sound sometimes very forced. In the opening track the band kicks thing up with solid riffing, but gets repetitive after a while and the overall melodic aspect is a bit obscured by the simplistic nature of the song.

Most songs go by without any real highlights until we hit “Red Fleer”. The track is very standard until it goes into the ‘acoustic’ passage, a nice change of pace but nothing to write home about. The ‘interlude’ “Only Echoes of Dreams” has filler track written all over it and we could have done without it. The ‘highlight’ of the album comes with the title “Inhale Exhale”, where the band finally crafts a tight sound and a very nice closing section.

Not all is bad, since the band managed to keep our attention for at least 10 minutes out of the album, and the bass guitar track is probably the only reason. Pounding away at all times this is probably the element of “Stand up and Nerve”. The drumming is very standard and the riffing gets very repetitive and dull very quickly.

Overall, As Likely As Not is evidently not ready to make an impact on the scene, but there are few moments here and there that show some promise. We would recommend this release only if you are running out of things to listen to and you can find it for cheap.

Band: As Likely As Not Album: Stand Up and Nerve
Label:The Execution Kollective Records

Release: March 28th, 2011

Official Site myspace
Genre: Melodic Death Metal / Metalcore

Country: Italy

Rating: 72/100
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