Review: While She Sleeps- So What?

While She Sleeps is a metalcore band from the UK that has started to break into the scene over the last three to four years. The band has been around since 2006 and is preparing to release their fourth full length studio album So What? One of the highlights of So What? comes at the very end of the album, with the final track “Gates of Paradise”. This track is everything that While She Sleeps did right on this record. The song enters loud and proud, with a loud and catchy chorus. The verse is aggressive and rhythmically complex. The bridge to the song has a very technical sounding riff that makes the listener want to head bang. The song includes some clean vocals towards the end and really opens up to leave the listener satisfied with their experience. This track along with “Inspire”, “The Guilty Party”, and “Haunt Me” are the highlights of the album The good thing about having such a great track to close the album is that it breaks up the feeling of monotony that started to set in during the second half of the record. The bad thing: this album started feeling monotonous. On the surface, this album is full of solid metalcore tracks. But having one after another after another that doesn’t do a whole lot differently – that’s when it starts to feel like a bit of a chore. That doesn’t mean that this album is bad by any means – quite the contrary actually. While She Sleeps can write songs with the best of them, but it seems that they need to expand their boundaries a bit. They need to take a chance in order to separate themselves from the rest of the pack. So What? just missed the mark when it came to following up the While She Sleeps’ previous album You Are We. Fans of the band’s back catalog will love this album, but people looking for something that breaks the familiar metalcore mold will be disappointed. Keep an eye on While She Sleeps. They won’t be going away any time soon. Score: 7.5/10 Notable Tracks: “Gates of Paradise”, “Inspire”, “The Guilty Party”, “Haunt Me”