Following up the very weak album “Volatile”, A Hero A Fake is back with another attempt at sounding original, barely a year after the release of their debut.

This progressive metalcore outfit out of Charlotte, NC has some cool parts going on this time around. Guitars go from chaotic bursts of shredding to beautiful melodic passages in the blink of an eye and everyone in the band is technically very skilled. The problem is that the growls are monotonous and the times they do try to mix it up, they do so with whiny clean vocals.

Although there is some definite improvement over last year’s debut, they still aren’t all too convincing on “Let Oceans Lie”. But hey, if they keep on evolving at this pace, they will have outgrown the ‘Between The Buried And Me clone’ moniker in a couple of albums.