Customer Reviews

A Types

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Hopesfall was one of the most intricate emotional metalcore bands ever created. Powerfull vocals, certian subtle background elements and moving guitar arangements in songs like "End of an Era" and "The Bending". Everything they released was purely artistic and incredibly intricate. Then they lost their guitarist and then everything went wrong. "A Types" lacks in pretty much every way with a failed attempt. They tried for a sound that was somewhat different but This Day Forward's last piece of work "In Response" release does it in a better way. Instead, buy This Day Forward "In Response" cd and wait for the new Curca Survive April 22nd release and Marigold's first release if you want good and very orginal versions of this hybrid metalcore genre. With the break up of Sky Came Falling, This Day Forward,and Posion the Well and A Life Once Lost's failed newer work, and now Hopesfall losing their talented guitarist therefore changing their style, the old emotional metalcore is close to being dead with only a very small amount of bands keeping it alive. Now the genre is starting to be reformed, which progression is great, but some bands often sound imitating and cliche. Support the ones that do it well and different. I wouldnt say that they sold out but this cd isnt what Hopesfall was about and doesnt contain enough orginality to be entitled a more "mature" album. Just because something has screaming in it doesnt make it inmature and is often a false asumption, especially considering how much orginatly "Satellite Years" and "No Wings to Speak of" contained and there is no way to deny it unless you have a closed mind.

I respect the fact that .hopesfall. didnt want to make a 'Satellite Years Part 2. I respect the fact that artists have to evolve as they mature, and that creative growth is more important than writing music purely to please the fans rahter then the band. But i *really* cant get into this cd. I think a large part of this is down to Jays vocals, which really dont do it for me, theyre just too nasal for my liking. He had such a powerful, and lets face it, f*cking scary, guttaral scream on The Satellite Years, i wish he'd have used it more on this cd, even if it wasnt as much as before.

A lot of reviews ive read said that it takes a few spins to really get into this album, and ive definately played this a lot of times in the 6 or so months since ive had it, hoping that one day it would suddenly seep in to my brain and id love it, but its just not happened. To me most of the songs on here just blend into one another, theres not much to distinguish them from each other, and i find this gets dull and repetetive.

Musically it falls somewhere between recent Glassjaw and maybe newer Cave In, but it doesnt have any of the driving riffs or uniqueness of those two particular bands.

Its not all bad. I like the artwork for this release, its sort of a continuation of the space theme from TSY, but there are martian/angel type creatures instead of space pods and the layout is made up of dark red colours rather then the royal blue/navy of previous. Its good to see hopesfall still put effort into choosing artwork that goes some way to compliment the music.

There are a few tracks on here that i genuiunely like. 'The Ones' is very reminiscent of the spacey guitars on TSY, and it also has a really sweet drawn ut instrumental end. Breathe from Coma, and Icarus are also decent well written rock songs which i can enjoy

However, pretty much everything which i loved about hopesfall on their earlier works isnt present on A types. Its not even really an emo album, if youre looking to compare it to bands like, i dunno, The Used or A Static Lullaby; it doesnt have any of the pop hooks that bands like that have.

Ill still continue to support the band since all of their other work has really connected with me, but unfortunately A Types wasnt as awesome id hoped. Maybe the months of anticipaction just killed it for me, but the music that made .hopesfall. so special and unique isnt here on A types.

Complete disappointment. Ok, it sounds good, its catchy, wow he almost makes me tear with his vocals. What happened to Hopesfall? Did their lead singer get kidnapped by a [...] $$$ robot. The big wig over at Trustkill Records must have pulled all the guys into his office one day not to long ago and said this: "Alright its clear you have talent as you showed on Satellite Years. But this time you're going to forfeit your artistic brilliance for radioplay. Its going to let down all the serious Hopesfall fans out there, but of course that doesn't matter. Make a record that won't scare away the general population with screaming and yelling. Guys, what is important to you now is $$$"
Really, it's a good album if you're an emo-head, but OG hopesfall fans have officially been let down. [...]

Simply put, "A Types" varies little from the hordes of other dime-a-dozen emo records currently crowding the market. Yes, I'll give them respect for trying a different direction from their previous works. However, this new style happens to be the exact same insipid cookie-cutter sound that every other floppyhaired/lip pierced clone band out there is currently doing, only with a few spacey twists. The melodies and song structures wander and meander, in some places building tension and then abandoning the idea without resolution. Sonically, it's lukewarm- never really rocking too hard, never really getting quite as beautiful and spacey as they used to on other records.

I don't recommend this album at all, it is the lowest quality record the band has put out (which isn't surprising, considering only one original member remains). Instead, I recommend '...No Wings to Speak Of", "the Frailty of Words" or "the Satellite Years," in that order.

If you think Thursday and My Chemical Romance are the best bands ever, you'll probably like this. Which is fine, I don't care how you spend your parents' money.

Finally, Hopesfall should change their name. If George Harrison kicked Paul out after John and Ringo quit and then got 3 other guys to fill in and called the band the Beatles, there would be mass outrage and rioting in the streets.

Alright first of all anyone that only mentions Satellite Years in their comparisons to this cd should sit down. Second of all anyone that says "people don't like it because their is no screaming", you can also sit down. The fact is A-Types does not even compare to any of their three previous releases in any way at all. For those kids that think Satellite Years is their best cd, listen to Frailty of Words which is probably one of the best cds, if not the best in this genre. This cd is perfection. The tracks on that cd and some on Satellite Years have a perfect flow, whether there is screaming or singing. A-Types on the other hand just gets flat out boring. The singing on the cd is fine, but the guitarwork and drums just fail. Don't get me wrong there still is some nice guitar work in tracks such as Breathe From a Coma which i do enjoy still, but if you compare any track from this cd to any old track, with or without vocals, it just doesn't compare. Now the music is just typical and boring when before they could take you from the heaviest breakdown to the most mellow interlude. They used to end songs with four minute interludes and you can just lose yourself in the beauty of how they are constructed. Listen to End of an Era or The Far Pavillions. If you don't enjoy screaming just keep listening to these songs until they get about halfway done and all of a sudden these interludes hit you. Even in "Frailty of Words" they have many tracks that include singing such as "Endeavor". This track is very heavy and then comes to a beautiful singing part that just blows you away. They constructed songs to perfection, including everthing possible and constantly changed everything, whereas now you hear repeated chorus' and many repetitive riffs. It is almost not even possible to compare this to anything that hopesfall has ever written. I know that they lost their guitarist and only have one original member, but how can they possibly try to live on as the same band. They have not matured, they have not sold out, they just have died. This cd just goes on and bores beyond belief and I cannot bring myself to understand how people say that it gets better by listen. The repetitive chorus' get worse everytime i hear them. It is pathetic when you hear the same line in a song about 7 times. "Woah Icarus temping fate again.." How many times does it need to be said so that the fans can all sing along. The old Hopesfall had no specific structure at all. It was pure chaos and then pure calmness and then sometimes they would even bring you back into the chaos before they ended the song. I enjoy when bands change styles or when bands have less screaming sometimes because i can appreciate that they are trying to move on as musicians, but once you get rid of originality that you once had, that's when you lose. I wish i could feel good about their change, but the cd is just flat out boring and does not keep it's originality. As one of the reviewers said before, if you want to hear a band that makes a great change and matures into a more rock type music listen to "In Response" by This Day Forward. They got rid of almost all of the screaming and it still is original. This is what Hopesfall seems to be trying to do, but they fail miserably. I still love Hopesfall, as they are my favorite band and I believe that the songs on the first three cds are some of the best songs ever, but this cd just even without comparison to those cds, is just boring and unoriginal. I just wish i could have seen them before they put out this cd, or even before they put out Satellite Years because their old stuff was so original. I will give it two stars because "It Happens" and "Breathe From a Coma" are decent tracks that are not that boring but as for the rest of the cd i would not recommend it. Check out "In Response", if you want to see a band progress you won't be dissapointed. As for Trustkill it is ashame that they had such great bands and let it go to waste and now they are one of the worst labels. And if you want to hear good Hopesfall purchase "No Wings To Speak Of" because it is the best cd ever made in this genre of music.

The songwriting and overall sound of this record doesn't stand out from the hordes of other 'screamo' fashionistas currently flooding the emo/hardcore genre with banal mediocrity. The lyrics and artwork are the most interesting parts of the record, with a few notable exceptions; but even those few moments of power don't add up enough to redeem this album. It's biggest weaknesses are: 1.unfocused, ignorable melodies that meander, 2.somewhat overproduced guitar, drums and bass that for the most part have been done before by 30 other bands in this genre. The guitars [with some notable exceptions]aren't nearly as varied and interestingly textured and interwoven as past .Hopesfall. records, and the drums are rather bland as well.
The resulting songwriting tends to build tension, then abandon said tension without resolving it and halfheartedly toying with a different tension, creating an atmosphere of aimlessness. They sound like they're trying to sound 'heartfelt' [god, how I have come to loathe that phrase], but sound halfhearted instead. It sounds a bit like a watered down Thursday imitation. None of this is very surprising, considering that they've only got one original member. That said, they would do well to change their name to something else.

In summation, this album is mediocre at best, and only seems poorer when compared to the band's former work.

This new crap makes me want to jump out of the window or slit my wrists they suck now. Thier older stuff was incredible but buying this album really pissed me off i wasted 14 dollars.
If your a fan of this band and havent picked it up yet key word.
DON'T. This album is garabage it sucks it shouldn't even get one star but hey why not.
They most likely spent more time on the art work then they did the songs for the album.
Don't buy it.

this album is so depressing.

i fell in love with hopesfall, and now i want to kill myself because of how much of a change this is. i give them credit, it's a good album... but not even in the same genre as the other album i considered so close to perfection.

I've been a Hopesfall fan for a while, since No Wings came out, and the thing that facinated me the most with the band is its musical creativity. I find that they are similar to Opeth (not musically) that they are classified into a genre but really only have one element in common with the rest of the genre. If we pick apart TSY, the music has more in common with newer glassjaw and newer deftones that it does with hardcore. Which leads us to A-Types...
I was like every other Hopesfall fan in the sense that I was initially disappointed by the album A-Types. But I also found I couldn't stop listening to it. I also found that musically it was more of a simplified, more organized, and better produced version of TSY. One of the biggest complaints with A-Types are the vocals. I find this arguement a little unfounded considering the fact that 4 of the 6 songs contain a minimal amount of screaming and that almost every song on the album has some sort of singing during it. In any case, Jay can sing very well and lyrically this isn't your everyday "cut my throat" whining. Jay's lyrics are just facinating to read because you are forced to draw your own meaning out of the songs. Back to the music itself. The album swings around almost as moodily as the older Hopesfall albums. They switch through time signatures with incredible easy. Every part of the song belongs right where it is and nothing is done in excess. The songs The Ones and Per Sempre Marchiamo captured me with their sheer emotion. This a great album once you get past the band's former versions. I can't wait to hear their next album and see what direction they go from here.

Stand Out Tracks: Icarus, Breathe From Coma, The Ones, Per Sempre Marchiamo

Do not buy this album, its unoriginal and boring. Hopesfall used to be something special, now I find them reminiscient of all the so many bands I see on MTV who sell out to play big shows with Good Charlotte. This album blows, go pick up "Satellite Years" or "No Wings to Speak Of", and to the kid rambling about "cookie monster vocals".... umm.... shut up.