An Autumn for Crippled Children

The best and most effective post-rock delivers a truly epic sound, creating a sublime experience that strives for sonic vistas the listener likely never previously imagined. Post-rock is a much more philosophical subgenre than other types of heavy music, in which bands attempt to match their musical form (the sounds and composition) to the ideas they're working with. This is in contrast to the more standard mode of exploring themes and ideas through lyrics. The main problem with Everything is that the music is rather small-sounding. None of the long, repetitive, riff-y sections reach the cosmic, symphonic sounds Autumn for Crippled Children would like to achieve; and to be quite honest, some of the songs are so boring they sound like the intro to something from the Cranberries. In short, the album lacks the musical scope to capture the band's post-rock, heady ideas, remaining more shoegazing than stargazing. Part of this is because the percussion sections on Everything sound like they were recorded using a drum machine or, even worse, a laptop. This isn't a sentiment against drum machines or laptop beats, per se, but it's definitely a sound that doesn't match up with the booming, larger-than-life ambitions An Autumn for Crippled Children are aiming for. None of Everything's nine tracks do much with any of the genres they're working with, whether it's black metal, post-rock or symphonic metal.