After listening to certain releases, you can't help but ask: Why do they even bother? That exact dilemma arises by the midpoint of the Danish band AS WE FIGHT's disc "Midnight Tornado." The first track of this album — the band's second overall — leaves a fairly positive impression. We hear very angry and aggressive metalcore: high extreme vocals alongside low ones, precise pounding riffs, no clean vocal passages, no keyboards. Melodicism in the riffs is present, but don't expect to hear anything truly memorable. After listening to several tracks, we realize with horror that there's absolutely no need to listen to the compositions sequentially from first to last — you could calmly put any single one on repeat and the effect would be exactly the same. By the time you finish the album, feelings are mixed: on one hand, a full 12 songs have been heard; on the other, they are all embarrassingly identical. Pounding at the beginning, the vocalist's relentless shrieking as if someone's grabbed him by something, then a break consisting exclusively of riffs, occasionally joined by the vocalist's grumbling. And so it goes for the entire disc. In short, the work is about absolutely nothing, and who the musicians are targeting is a question for them.
