'Feel the Misery' has been pretty well received from the small number of reviews I've read, so my personal reservations are probably pretty subjective. Also, I should say as a caveat that I do like the album and it's by no means their worst. By the way, I've been into the band since 1995 and they'd be in my top 3 favourite bands of all time.
My issues:
1. For me I just don't get the chill - that feeling - that I get from their best work. This is a band whose best material is untouchable for atmosphere, and while I get some of it in 'Feel the Misery', I don't feel it as much as the band thinks I should, judging from the title. The keyboards and violin are in particular really soulless to me and largely tacked on.
2. Aaron Stainthorpe's voice. Sometimes it feels like he's trying to squeeze a vocal line onto a riff that doesn't suit it (like the main theme/vocal melody in the title tack), and I also think that he sings too much across the album. There isn't a lot of space for the music to just develop and take the listener places and I've actually found myself becoming a little annoyed by his warbling voice and growls appearing all the time. I haven't analysed this closely, but it seems like he's constantly signing and growling and in my opinion the riffs need space to breathe.
3. The drums sound a bit ill-suited to the riffs. Again, in the title track, the snare drum roll/fill during the very start of the song that plays along with Aaron's first few lines is just so out of place it's ridiculous. Other parts of the album are ok, but the drums just feel wrong to me more often than not. This could be due to me thinking about the fact that it's a session drummer who also engineered the album (a nice guy I briefly conversed with a few years ago, Dan Mullins), but I think it's more than my own bias. It sounds like a guy doing his best rather than a true part of the music's creation. Drum karaoke, if you will.
4. This is a pretty bullshit complaint because it has nothing to do with the music, but the artwork booklet sucks. The front cover is amazing, and when I saw it I got excited about a booklet that used all these great colours and explored the stained-glass theme, but no - upon opening the booklet it's just a bland set of dark pages with the lyrics printed on them. And a shite band photo in the middle.
These are my main issues with 'Feel the Misery'. There are some very good songs and moments on the album and like I say, I do like it, but overall it just feels a bit off. Albums I rate well and truly over it: 'Turn Loose the Swans', 'The Angel and the Dark River' and 'Songs of Darkness, Words of Light' to name just three. I don't expect bands to match their classics each time they release an album, but this band seems capable of more (or less in the case of Aaron).
