Light Your Anchor is a five-piece, German Melodic Hardcore band that was founded in Hamburg in 2011 and they are back with their first full-length album ‘Hopesick’. If you liked their EP ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’ than you will certainly love the album, it’s filled with old school melodic and technical hardcore spiced up by the load of variations in style, tempo and structure with a clever combination of screaming and melodic vocals.
The second track ‘Withered and burned’ immediately has the potential to become a sing a long song, with a very catchy chorus: "Go on with your senseless talking, we'll be in the first row to see you falling! ". The mix of breakdowns, screams and clean vocals is just perfect. The album proceeds smoothly with ‘Fall and Stand’, featuring Liferuiner’s front man Jonathan O'Callaghan, with a very beautiful ending, supported by a compelling piano sound. On track # 9 called ‘This Path’ Climates front man Wes Thompson is contributing.
The last track ‘Carry On’ stands out clearly from the rest of the songs. While the others are really fast and rough, ‘Carry On’ has a quiet and sad edge to it with only a guitar used as instrumental support for the lyrics.
The whole album is a true masterpiece, it’s just fun to listen to and even after hearing it for a hundred times it’s unlikely you’ll get bored. Each of the twelve songs offer changes in tempo, structure, composition and a lot of people don’t like this going back and forth between fast and slow but after a bit of listening you get used to it and you will see that it fits like a glove on ‘Hopesick’. The vocals are not perfect but at least they sound really honest. Melodic Hardcore fans should definitely check this album out.