Add a healthy dose of death metal to Bullet for My Valentine and you get Montreal ’s 3 Mile Scream. I’m all for melody in metal, but 3 Mile Scream frontman Matt McGashy’s thin singing voice is a letdown after hearing his blood-curdling screams and earth-shaking growls. And you have to deal with it in every song, as if the band laid out a formula, then refused to deviate from it. The musicians form a tight unit, taking their cues more from thrash and death metal bands rather than hardcore acts. Even if you acknowledge “metalcore” as a genre (which I don’t), you cannot include 3 Mile Scream among those that would fall into that category.

Talented though they are, the band tends to go only one speed—fast. The best song on their debut, A Prelude to Our Demise, is “Dare to Question,” which takes the time to slow down for a nice guitar solo. But no matter how good the musicianship is, the vocals will hold the band back for me. On “Mourning the Lost,” McGashy briefly adds the edge of his screaming to his singing and it is the best he sounds on the entire disc. With more of that, 3 Mile Scream could become a force to be reckoned with.