We Butter the Bread with Butter // Goldkinder
Rating: 3.0/5.0 — HMG does it with Nutella and then toasts the bread.
Label: EU: Heartwork | UK: BMG | US: 12th Street Records
Websites: wbtbwb.com| facebook | myspace
Release Date: EU: 2013.08.09 | UK: 2013.08.12 | US: 08.13.2013
They may butter the bread with butter, but Nutella-ing the bread with Nutella gives it a sweeter and richer (albeit more sinful) taste. It’s more fattening too, which is what these skinny German kids seem to be in need of.
Despite having the appearance of a typical metalcore band, We Butter the Bread with Butter is not one. They play electronicore, which seems set to be the next deathcore. Just look at the rising popularity of bands like Abandon All Ships, Arsonists Get All the Girls, Born of Osiris, Crossfaith and We Came as Romans. Dear metal elitists [read: people with taste — AMG], please take note of this impending electronicalypse and stock up on dusty cassettes and kvlt LPs to boost your immune system.
To sum up the sound of their music by making a mandatory reference to some big-shot band: They are like Rammstein with a hyperactive keyboardist. Beefy and repetitive riffs that sound like the heartbeats of a colossal, cosmopolitan-destroying mechanical kaiju are commonplace in the sonicscape of Goldkinder. The synthesizer, however, mostly just exists for providing simple accompaniment in the background and as peaceful and beguiling introductions to various songs (before the hard-hitting guitars hit the face of some unsuspecting kid who thinks that he/she just discovered a new electronica band). It is also very effective at evoking that trance-like atmosphere at the climax of some songs (e.g. “Mayday Mayday”), which is probably something that many of you HMG-hatin’ people hate, of course.
Electronica + metalcore is a combination that actually works. But it’s a pity that WBtBwB’s keyboardists, Marcel “Marci” Neumann (also the lead and rhythm guitarist) and Can Özgünsür (also the drummer) don’t push the limits of their composing and technical skills. Since the band’s sound is dependent on the synthesizer to set itself apart from the bulk of the metalcore crowd, these two guys need to come up with more of those beautiful synth solos for future albums (such as the one heard in “Ohne Herz” from roughly its midpoint onwards). Better still; up the ante and perhaps attempt some Janne Warman-like (Children of Bodom) synth madness1!
Being the hipsters they are [Note the ironically swoopy haircuts and pink shirts in their promo photo — AMG], WBtBwB also used the sound effect of a camera beeping while focusing before apparently snapping a picture of something as a transition in the song “Krieg aus Gold”. Oh, y’know, utilizing the sound of some everyday object is novel and makes one’s music more interesting.
Vocals-wise, WBtBwB has a mixture of auto-tuned clean singing, hoarse screaming and death metal-style growling. There is obviously nothing about the auto-tuned clean singing that is worth mentioning. The hoarse screaming sounds typical too. But vocalist Paul Bartzsch guttural death growls are done right, for they sound gratifyingly deep and monstrous enough to warrant him a place in some deathcore band (check out those mean death growls heard in the introduction of album-opener, “Alles was ich will”).
An all-in-all satisfactory record, Goldkinder doesn’t confound expectations, but it does have the value of novelty for now due to its electronica element and how well it is blended with metalcore-fuelled-by-industrial-metal-riffs. The 51-minute-long record does feel too draggy as it becomes white noise about halfway through one’s nth listen. As a general rule, -core albums should be kept at around 30 minutes in length; perhaps even more so if there is an electronica influence, because electronic sound effects in music tend to get annoying when the music starts trying to go all Between the Buried and Me on the listener.
