Hawthorne Heights Album: “The Silence in Black and White”

Hawthorne Heights is one of the best bands I have heard in far too long. There are so many "screamo" bands that have no depth, can't be understood and pretty much just suck all around. HH's The Silence In Black And White has amazing haunting vocals with screaming in the background. The melody with the screaming makes for a beautiful combination that I never get tired of. I have seen HH in concert 3 times and continue to be blown away by them.

I like this cd and I like the band I have seen them live once and plan on doing it again. I have contomplated buying this newer limited edition version, since i have the original version. That is why i started reading reviews. But then I came along this dumbass writing a bad review just because he thinks that this band is not original. He says they sound like Thursday and Taking Back Sunday. I agree but they sound different from them as well, it is not a cookie cutter similarity. What really drives me nutz is that he says that other bands are more original. The only band that i will say he mentioned that is an origianl band is fugazi. The rest sound like other bands that have come before them. Where the f**k did you get the idea that System of a Down are origianl and independant. They are the most repeated and mainstream nu-metal band out there. Their lyrics are complete bull s**t. The only thing that makes them independant is that the put thrash into the nu-metal. Thrash is not original it has been done for over two decades now. I can understand what he means by the are not an "independant" band, but use better examples of independant bands. Such as Dillinger Escape Plan or Converge or even He Is Legend. If your going to make an argument have good examples to back it up with, not bull s**t.

Here's the thing about Hawthorne Heights, they're actually a decent band who just happened to pull that on card out of the deck to make it big. Unfortunately, most non-conformist screamo/emo/hardcore listeners have it in their mindset that "success" rhymes with "sell-out". Sometimes I will agree, but in this case The Silence in Black and White was reasonably succesful with the non-mainstream community before MTV even thought of picking it up and butchering it. Admittedly the album isn't the best but has some powerful songs, Blue Burns Orange is one of the more powerful Emo songs I've heard in a while. Yet much of the album seems a bit like space filling mush, it's still not a horrible album. If You're an open-minded, accepting emo fan than I would highly recommend picking up this album, it is, after all, one of the better very recent albums of it's genre

Misreable is the title I would give to this CD. Unfortunately a band with so much marketing power puts out a chunk of crap. The only song worth mentioning is "Ohio is for Lovers." They sound like a garage band trying to who imitate finch or the other bands of the same genre. I believe the try to hard. Music in general has gone to nothing. Unfortunately the music world marks bands as punk. I havent heard anything that qualifies as punk that is played on the radio. Nice try, HH bring on some Simple Plan(Not Really they are worse).

The genre of emo is one which is characteristically defined by bad vocalists. That is not to say emo is invalid, but that any professionally trained vocalist would consider the singing sub-par. Therefore, when listening to these types of bands, one is prepared to offer a bit of forgiveness in that area as it is simply the style. With Hawthorne Heights however, the boundaries of tolerance are simply shattered.

Lead vocalist JT Woodruff easily has one of the worst voices in popular music. In fact, it wouldn't a strech to suggest that his is actually THE worst in rock today. Even within the emo world, this guy still doesn't cut it. There are much less popular bands that have much more vocal talent than this hack. His voice sounds like a little boy who just saw his dog get run over. I just cannot fathom how this band was ever signed.

In addition to the pure lack of quality singing, HH fails to make up for it with good lyricism. Emo bands are known for their EMOtional words, and I think that is a major selling point for the style on the whole. With these guys, you don't even have to buy the CD to realize its full of shallow, cliche lyrics. In the first single, "Ohio is For Lovers," there is a horrible afterthought line "Because you kill me. You know you do, you kill me well." This piece of poetry sounds like filler they wrote because they couldn't come up with anything for that part of the song. On the follow up single "Niki FM" they have a cheesy ode to a cheesy movie moment with "I'm outside of your window with my radio." Of all the allusions I've heard in music, this has to be the worst.

As if all of this weren't bad enough, Hawthorne Heights falls short once again in their instrumentation. In one word: generic. Musically, this band offers nothing original, clever, or even remotely interesting in the way of guitars and drums. Just a bunch of stock riffs and overused songwriting devices that you can take directly to the recycle bin for the next generic band.

Overall, Hawthorne Heights is a terrible band. Even if you are a fan, there is no getting around that fact. This is a group that takes the bad qualities of emo music emphasizes them; terrible vocals, corny lyrics, generic music... I'm not even fan of this style, but for what it is there are other bands doing much more substantial work in the genre. HH is a paradox of badness, they are made-for-MTV processed commericalism, while at the same time completely lacking any kind of talent. The worst band of 2005.