Bands, I beseech you!  If you are recording your album, and the music you are playing sounds like it could be coming from Generic Genre Band X... STOP!  Record no more!  Cease!  Desist!!  Don't make any more dull and pointless albums.  Or, at least, do so in a genre I don't review.  Like 'Country Music'.  Go be a country music band.  I won't care, as I will not have to hear it.  I did, however, have to endure Fall of the Leafe's Volvere... a tepid and meandering slab of dishwatery metal-ish mush.

If Creed recorded a cover album of pre-gothy Paradise Lost songs, it would sound something like Volvere.  Imagine booming guitars, unintelligibly bellowed vocals, and a band with a staunch dedication to providing listeners with no memorable melodies whatsoever... that is what we have here.  Formless, lifeless music pitiably bereft of a single interesting musical idea.  Fifty three minutes of it.  Doled out in five minute chunks that all plod along at the same mid tempo pace.

The guys in this band, all six of them, seem competent enough on their given instruments.  Maybe they should hire an arranger to provide them with music worth playing.  Maybe they should all take up new careers, like playing at weddings, or digging ditches, or burning churches.  I don't know.  Anything to spare the world another hour of meandering blah-metal... and to spare me from having to review it.  Stop the madness!

Track List:
01.) A Waiting Room Snap
02.) If Mirrors Leave Men in Crumbs
03.) Enemy Simulator
04.) Pillar of the Sun
05.) Song From the Second Floor
06.) More Like a Situation
07.) Hell's Silence
08.) Big Ol' Fat Rain Inside
09.) Security Locks Are Good
10.) Guilt Threat
11.) Cut the Smoke

Fall of the Leafe is:
Jussi Hänninen  - guitar/compositions
Kaj Gustafsson – guitar
Matias Aaltonen – drums
Miska Lehtivuori – bass
Petri Hannuniemi – keyboards, and myself
Tuomas Tuominen – vocals/texts

The End Records (US): 
http://www.theendrecords.com 

Rage Of Achilles Records:
http://www.rageofachilles.com/

07/13/04