For Those Who Don't Believe

From the band name, one might expect Bela Kiss to be a gothy darkwave band (Bela, Bela Lugosi, Dracula, Dracula's kiss...), and from the album cover and title, one might expect a serious death metal bent. There's a fair amount of the latter on For Those Who Don't Believe: singer Nick Prainito tends to dip into the death grunt voice at least once per song, and drummer Ross Munroe is similarly fond of the speedy blast-beat style. But for the most part, Bela Kiss are a fairly standard-issue screamo band, with all that this entails: tortured, weltschmerz-heavy lyrics delivered in a pained howl, slow/fast dynamic shifts, and a pair of metal-edged guitarists tossing off sprightly riffs in between the heavy power-chording. This doesn't fit particularly well with the black metal vibe in Prainito's voice, with the result that For Those Who Don't Believe mostly sounds like the work of a band that's being pulled in two different stylistic directions. The tension this develops in songs like "Dear Miss Illneverforgetyourname" is superficially exciting, but it's easy to imagine that Bela Kiss are going to split into two different bands by the time the next batch of demos are written.