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

Review by Adam M on January 23, 2018.

Barren Earth performs a style of metal that is very influenced by Amorphis and this is readily apparent on Curse of the Red River. The band’s first album proper does a good job of mimicking that band’s sound, but there is enough new on display to make for an entirely interesting listen.

The music here has a folk element, but one that is slightly different than the one that Amorphis applies. Instead of the one seen on Elegy, for example, the band employs their own traditional style to the music to give it a character all it’s own. The songs are bombastic in their folk element and add a lot of guitar layering to the mix.   This can be seen from the track Our Twilight which features clean and harsh singing in equal measure and makes for a good early album highlight. The album continues to march along at a nice pace and puts the folk influence strongly in the tracks. The music is something to be uplifted by and very nice overall. It is melodic, yet features a nice dual interplay between styles and vocal types to add diversity and dynamics to the mix. The melodic portions are strong and really make an impact on the listener. This is felt through the guitars, which have a nice presence and are one of the better portions of the musicianship. The equally powerful vocals soar above the music and give it a nice character. The drumming finishes the musicianship elements and though it isn’t as strong as the guitars, it does a nice job providing the backbone to the tracks. The overall instruments and vocals of the album are stellar.

It is the song-writing which is slightly more suspect. The band bested the songs of this album on their very next album and though they are extremely solid, it comes up a bit short of that effort. This is still a very powerful album of folk influenced metal.

Rating: 8.1 out of 10