Nights Like These: The Faithless

First of all, if you want your band to be remembered among the hordes of young American metal sound-alikes out there, you have to come up with a better name than Nights Like These. Band names like Mastodon, Converge, the Red Chord, even Between the Buried and Me have some pop to them. And if you’re going to follow the musical precedent set by the aforementioned bands, please try to put an original twist into the songs. Sure, we get some good sludge riffs (“Ghost Town Rituals”, “Symphony for the Plague”), progressive-minded grind (“Bury the Messenger”), and plenty of unironic fantasy lyrics (“Storming Valhalla”) courtesy lead screamer Billy Bottom (that’s right, Billy Bottom), but over the course of 29 insane minutes, there’s very little on The Faithless that grabs us, shakes us by our collars, and brashly declares, “We’re the future of American metal!” It’s almost as if the Memphis band is waiting for the new Mastodon album to see which direction they’re going to go in next.