Album Review: Sinner's Blood - The Mirror Star

The new crop of bands Frontiers Records has been coming out with this year has been large, but rather underwhelming. While I appreciate the label's efforts to find and grow the next generation of rock and metal bands, I can't say that many of them have impressed me all that much. I don't want to write that off to inexperience, as plenty of bands have started their careers with their best work over the years. No, I think the reason lies more in the fact that so many bands now are coming up with sounds more stale and generic than ever. I've lost count of how many bands have been trying to sound like it's still 1985. It isn't fresh, there's too much competition, and it's hard to write in a style that existed before your birth.

Thankfully, Sinner's Blood is a new band that sounds completely modern and of this time. Their style of rock is heavy, thick, and full of big melodies. The saturated guitars fill the sonic space with plenty of weight, while the songwriting delivers radio-friendly hooks song after song. Sinner's Blood are a welcome antidote to what mainstream rock has to offer us, for the most part. They have a similar sound, but far stronger and more appealing writing.

I will disagree with the typical press release posturing about one thing. They say James Robledo is soon to be a household name. Yeah, that's not going to happen. I'm not denigrating him, by the way. He's a good singer, and puts in a good performance on the record. But let's be honest here; no rock singer right now is ever going to become a household name, let alone one in a new band no one has yet heard of. The same thing has been said about label-mate Ronnie Romero for a few years now, and even with a stint fronting the reincarnated Rainbow, he is still a fringe figure in music. That's just reality, and while I know press releases are supposed to do everything they can to hype the music, saying things that are patently absurd doesn't help anyone. By their words, they have set it up where if he doesn't become ubiquitous in music (and no, I'm not counting the five other Frontiers projects he will be included on over the next few years), he's failed. That doesn't help.

Back to the point, now. Sinner's Blood have delivered us an album of mainstream rock that does everything it's supposed to. It's not rocket science; big guitars and hummable melodies are all you need. A lot of bands, however, can't write well enough to work the easy formula. And it's not easy, to be honest. Writing melodies that are sticky, memorable, yet don't sound like something we've already heard a dozen times is hard. But it's the single most important thing a band needs to do, and Sinner's Blood does it better than a lot of new bands are able to.

There's still room for the riffs to get a little sharper, and they need to write a better ballad than the rather boring "Forever", but the core of this album is the kind of modern rock we need more of. In a year with a lot of new bands trying to find their place, Sinner's Blood is one of the better ones.