Review by Jack on September 8, 2002.

Pretty hard to pigeonhole these lads from The Rise, stripped down to the bone is a hardcore band with a passion for experimentation and a burning desire to walk a different path to what many of their genre mates do. I am a strong believer that the metal genre as a whole contains some of the more imaginative song writing ideas from all genres of music. One thing “Signal to Noise” benefits from is not particularly subscribing to the hardcore/punk sound and perhaps, predictable song writing process that does take place by a lot of ‘lesser’ bands in the hardcore area.

My favorite aspect of The Rise is their ability to break up each song with maybe a metal lead, followed by a pumping electronic beat and then possibly backed up with some wall-to-wall hardcore chorus thrown in for good measure. I am not the biggest hardcore or electronic fan in the world, but yet I find myself drawn to The Rise for their ability to merge many very different areas, but The Rise have a rare ability to do it extremely well.

“Signal to Noise” is a bit of a weird album. I don’t particularly like the vocals all that much and some of the electronics beats do seem a bit obscure. However, if you throw them together with some of the other elements that The Rise is able to concoct and you have a very cool album.

Bottom Line: While not advocating to either metal, punk, hardcore or emo, The Rise does throw all the aforementioned in a blender and the end result is “Signal to Noise”. This would not work if it was not for strong song-writing and that “Signal to Noise” oozes intelligence. Even if you don’t particularly like the above styles of music, you could do a lot worse than be exposed to some memorable creativity from The Rise.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 9
Atmosphere: 7
Production: 7
Originality: 8
Overall: 6.5

Rating: 7.5 out of 10