Youth Forgotten
Ghost of A Fallen Empire
Self-Released
Youth Forgotten = Vitamin X + Agnostic Front + Marilyn Manson
Street: 01.31
Let’s first address Ghost of a Fallen Empire’s strengths: It’s clean-sounding, it has some killer solos, and the song “Anthem” is a great example of combining metalcore and New York hardcore. That being said, I really tried to like this album, but couldn’t. Youth Forgotten have a lot of influences: speed metal, thrash, early-’00s metalcore, gothic rock and crossover. When YF combines two genres in one song, it sounds good, but this was quite rare. Oftentimes, songs would have elements of more than three genres, making it quite unlistenable. This complex genre mixing also made the album inconsistent—one minute, I’m rocking out to a grind-y-pig-squeal romp tromp and then, mid-song, I’m thrown balls deep into a Peter Steele hymn. You, fair reader, may be OK with that kind of thing, but I found it quite off-putting. –Alex Cragun