Orange County has become a breeding ground for metalcore in the SoCal scene, spawning the likes of Bleeding Through, Atreyu and Throwdown. The latest addition to that healthy independent community is Scars Of Tomorrow, a band hoping to gain recognition as one of Victory Record's hottest new-comers. After releasing two well-received but often overlooked albums, most notably 2003's "Design Your Fate", the band have stepped up their game, delivering the tenacious "The Rope Tied To The Trigger" to a receptive but heavily saturated audience of hardcore faithful.

Scars Of Tomorrow clearly have a ravenous appetite and they plow through the included eleven songs with a vicious hunger for hardcore. Their Hatebreed-like style of vitriolic anthems have abated slightly however, as the group seem to have adopted a more metallic approach. The healthy addition of clean-cut melodies introduces a more accessible edge to the band's brick-in-the-face formula, and through it all their hardcore intensity remains firmly intact. Rather than bother with intricate guitar patterns or quirky vocalizations, these men prefer to steamroll forward with bludgeoning hardcore muscle. The material offered on "The Rope Tied To The Trigger" benefits from a much more polished sound than their past albums, and this clarity allows the band to impact that much more powerfully. This avenue of melodic metalcore has been well traveled, but to their credit Scars Of Tomorrow have a knack for creating straight-forward, easy to digest blasts of testosterone. Call them the street-wise Poison The Well, a less metallic Atreyu, or perhaps even a rough-around-the-edges Chimaira; whichever the case may be, the band is left lacking their own true identity and this weakens their overall impact on an audience all too accustomed to this 'hot' genre.

This is a safe release for the Orange County collective, as it is clear that they have certainly grown musically yet opt to play to their strengths rather than attempt something inherently new. The only issue is that though this is solid metalcore, it unfortunately covers no new ground. The chunky metal-tinged hardcore offered forth sounds all too familiar when placed next to a myriad of other like-minded ensembles; and the heightened melodic inclusion lacks the dynamic ability to really capture the listener's attention. The group offer brief glimpses at becoming more than just another threatening hardcore monster, dallying with scattered melodies tinged with a more rock-based design, yet they never quite pull the trigger and instead escape for the comforting confines of over-the-top aggression. Their spit-shine take on modern metalcore should find plenty of ears open to more of the same, but those looking for a fresh face in the hardcore community may feel that "The Rope Tied To The Trigger" is left shooting blanks.