InDirections

Clockworks

Dallas-based quintet InDirections make their full-length debut with a thoroughly faceless slab of digitally stuttering, ultra-produced metalcore. The downtuned riffs are exactly as heavy as those of their better-known peers; the clean vocals have the requisite, piercing, nasal tone; the keyboards show up when it’s time to get deep and earnest; you know the drill. There’s absolutely nothing here to lift this band out of the pack. In fact, if you threw tracks from this album into a Spotify playlist alongside half the roster of Rise and similar labels, there’s no way you’d be able to pick them out. And maybe that’s the idea—maybe InDirections are hoping to just blend in, like knockoff items bought from sketchy stores in downtown alleys: a Calvin Kline shirt, say, or a pair of Bony headphones. “Hey, kid, do you like metalcore? Here, have some metalcore.”

InVogue http://www.invoguerecords.com

“Defiance”