Album Review: Ruining It for Everybody by Iwrestledabearonce

Doesn't that cake look delicious? Readily dismissed by those of limited patience as being a little too ‘wacky’ for their own good, Iwrestledabearonce are up against it with ‘Ruining It For Everybody’. Despite a new found accessibility brought on by the cunning introduction of recognisable song structures to lure the listener into a false sense of security, daytime radio schedules will doubtless remain untroubled. Still, the mainstream’s loss is the underground’s gain, as this preposterously technical mish-mash of progressive metal, full-throated hardcore, operatic female vocals and lounge jazz interludes triumphantly evidences a band taking an absurd amount of joy in kicking against the pricks.

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It would be easy, exceptionally so even, to lump a band like Iwrestledabearonce into the same class of bands as Attack Attack!, where metalcore and electronic elements are fused together into a hyper-ironic mess of heavy breakdowns and Auto-Tuned pop insanity. While Iwrestledabearonce certainly skirt this line, there’s something about their sound that helps them avoid this kind of classification, instead putting them somewhere between a scene band and the avant metal vanguard where bands like Dillinger Escape Plan and Daughters melt minds with reckless abandon. On their second album, Ruining It for Everybody, the band continues to establish itself as a more serious player in the metal world than anyone could’ve expected, delivering an album that lurches unpredictably between twisting discordance and pleasant, flowing ambience, agitating the musical waters with an acerbic blast of frenzied screaming and searing, rapid-fire guitar blasts before calming them down with singer Krysta Cameron’s soaring vocals.

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