CD: On Frail Wings of Vanity and Wax Artist: Alesana Label: Fearless Records Rating: 1.5/5 Best Song: This Conversation Is Over Reviewer: Bobby Gorman

"The crowd is still screaming at a sold out show in Anaheim, California as the sweetcore phenomenon known as Alesana exits the stage."

That's the first paragraph of Alesana's bio, which instantly had me asking myself "what the fuck is sweetcore?" Don't we have enough crazy terms dividing the scene into different sections already? Why do we need to create more? I don't know what "sweetcore" is, this is the first I've ever heard the term; but I have to say that if Alesana is a prime example of "sweetcore", I really hope I don't hear many more "sweetcore" acts.

While musically, Alesana are quite sound and very talented, their debut full length, On Frail Wings Of Vanity and Wax, is just way too generic and unoriginal to be taken seriously. It's a failsafe release that will sell well due to it's easy appeal to the masses. The emo boys and emo girls of the scene will eat it up because they carefully take everything that is the "in-thing" to do and combine them together to create a emo/scremo platter for the listener to devour. With three vocalists alternating from Coheed & Cambria whines to Escape The Fate's screams with a more melodic poppy voice filling in the gaps between, Alesana's vocal delivery comes in a rampant smorgasbord of styles as the voices build up on one another. It wouldn't be so bad if Dennis Lee didn't throw in so many blatant and unnecessary screams, but the way it is they seem to use the screams because it's the "in" thing. Congratulations, I Hate You even take's a page out of The Used's notebook with a spoken word introduction; although the introduction - and the song - isn't nearly as memorable or good as I'm A Fake.

Lyrically, On Frail Wings of Vanity and Wax falls victim to the same pitfalls of the song structure. Slightly intelligent and with some promise but the cliche comments about blood and death that are scattered throughout the album drag them down. Lyrics like "Eyes opened to splattered blood. Cold tile mocks me as I arise to find the knife is still in my back" from Daggers Speak Louder Than Words is just one of the many examples.

Oddly enough though, the most disappointing aspect of this album is how it continually fails to build on it's potential. You get songs like Pathetic, Ordinary which starts off which such an amazing riff that you think "wow, this could be good;" but then the blood curling screams come in without any reason and the Claudio Sanchez rip-off vocals fill out the rest of the track and suddenly you've lost interest in the song. Twelve songs later you're glad the album has finally ended because at fifteen songs and fifty-five minutes, On Frail Wings of Vanity and Wax quickly becomes tiresome and long.

I still don't know what "sweetcore" is, and I have to admit that if this is "sweetcore", I'm not a huge fan of the genre. There's some potential in here, the six-piece band is very talented musically, but they fail to use that talent for something creative and instead just pick and choose from all the current "it" bands.