I have a friend Finn who has a relatively good taste in music, and really enjoys hardcore. I knew he wasn't a big fan of Alesana, but I decided to have him give one of their older songs, "Red And Dying Evening" a listen. Here's what he had to say.
"The singer has an very high pitched voice, and its not produced very well to be honest. his clean vocals are sharp and shrill, and very whiny. He also seems to scream in mostly highs. All of this high pitched vocals, combined with high key guitar riffs and chords, make it difficult to distinguish the guitar and the singing. not to mention the fact that the guitar, though played very well, and has versatile and entertaining riffs, is not loud enough, and is lacking the sharpness the vocals have. the drumming is bad as well: it doesn't have a crisp sound to it, and to be fair, the drummer isn't particularly talented. The volume of the bass as well in this song needs to be increased, to give it a better structure.
if I was the frontman or producer of this band, I would produce the vocals to be not as sharp and shrill, so that the guitar and vocals would be distinguishable, and I would tell the vocalist to vary his range of screams, and experiment with lows and mids more, to open up the range of genres and fanbases throughout the post/hardcore scene. the bass should be increased to give this song the heaviness it needs, and the drumming needs to be re done completely, to give it an up to date, clear and well recorded sound to the song.
I'm changing my rating of this song from 2 out of 10 to three, because of the catchy, and versatile guitar riffs, and vocalist isn't bad at his job, he's just under produced and uses high vocals too much. Another thing I liked about this song was the subtle appeal to mathcore fans with the changing time signatures. unfortunately this song is just a failed attempt at a hardcore/posthardcore song, and evidently falls into the category of screamo because of the lack of bass and roughness.
also, the ending with the piano fill is unnecessary and to be quite honest, is a shitty icing on a shitty cake."
Now though I personally believe that it is understandable if I refuse to be his friend anymore.
The singer's high pitched voice is what gives Alesana an edge, and allows them to appeal to a larger fanbase. The way his voice is produced, though I believe it's fine, shouldn't have anything to do with it at all- plus this was a few years ago.
You must be deaf to not be able to distinguish the guitar from the singing, too. That doesn't even make sense. They sound absolutely nothing alike.
The drummer, Jeremy, has so much talent and is one of the best drummers in the hardcore scene.
I completely disagree with everything that my friend said.
Alesana's the best.