Failure On — Beloved

Failure On is the only full-length studio album by Beloved, the Christian post-hardcore band from Kernersville, North Carolina. Solid State Records released it on June 24, 2003. Ten songs, about forty-four minutes, produced by GGGarth Richardson, the same name on Rage Against the Machine and Project 86 credits. It's the record that made Beloved a Solid State staple of the early 2000s scene, and the one fans still point to when they talk about the band.

The story

Beloved formed in the fall of 1999 around East Forsyth High School. They put out an independent album, then the EP The Running on Vindicated Records, and they toured with Underoath, Luti-Kriss (soon to become Norma Jean), and Cool Hand Luke. Takehold Records was closing a sale to Tooth & Nail when Beloved came calling, so the band landed on Solid State instead. Solid State reissued The Running, then sent them into the studio with GGGarth for the full-length.

The lineup on Failure On is Josh Moore on clean vocals and guitar, Dusty Redmon and Matt Harrison on guitar, Johnny Smrdel on bass, and Joe Musten on drums and screams. Three guitars is a lot of weight for a post-hardcore record, and the album uses all of it. After the cycle, the band played a farewell show in Winston-Salem on January 14, 2005, with Underoath, Norma Jean, Glass Casket and Classic Case on the bill. Redmon later joined Dead Poetic and The Almost. Musten went on to Advent and then The Almost as well. The band has reunited in recent years, but Failure On is still the record that defines them.

The sound

The trick of this album is contrast. Soft, almost airy clean sections give way to breakdowns that hit like a wall. APESHIT, reviewing it in November 2003, said Beloved could "swoop deftly from an alternative rock melody into an absolutely devastating hardcore breakdown," and called the opener "Failure On My Lips" a perfect example: a radio-friendly start that jumps into a Poison the Well-style double-bass onslaught. Michael Weaver, writing for Jesus Freak Hideout's Tooth & Nail Top 100 list (where the album sits at number 95), called it "part post-hardcore and part emo," a bridge for listeners moving from punk into heavier music.

Shelby Foster at Cross Rhythms heard the same mix and hated it. Foster said the metalcore and melodic rock fusion was "as awkward as their album title," that the two styles "clash hideously when combined," and that the melodies were "too big, bright and inspirational." Foster wanted them darker and more blended with the screams, and wrote that the album sounded like a band that "pumps their fists at a hardcore show on Saturday night, then sings anthemic worship songs on Sunday morning." That's a fair description of what Beloved were doing. Whether you hear it as a flaw or the whole point is where the reviews split.

A Sputnikmusic user review from 2010 gave it 4.5 out of 5 and compared the melodic-passage-into-breakdown method to August Burns Red, even though Beloved came first. The writer praised Musten's screams as having "an incredible impact," said the breakdowns were the album's real chops, and liked that the faith in the lyrics was clear without being preachy. Across roughly 300 Sputnik ratings the album sits around a 4.0 average. The cleaner vocals from Moore do less heavy lifting than the screams, and the bass sits low in the mix, but the three-guitar attack and the Musten hits are what people remember.

The heart of the record

"Death to Traitors" is the peak. APESHIT called it "the aural equivalent of being mauled by a sabretooth tiger" and said heavy melodic music "simply does not get any better than that track." Solid State posted an official video for it, directed by Steve Pedulla of Thursday. At over six minutes it is the longest song here, and it earns the runtime. "Aimless Endeavor" is the other flagship, the one with the official EMI video and the one Weaver still hears rocking when "the guitar and screams really kick in before the chorus."

Up front, "Failure On My Lips," "Only Our Faces Hide" and "Rise & Fall" come out swinging. "Defect from Decay" and "Watching the Lines Blur" keep the pace mid-album. "Inner Pattern" and "Allure" are the late-album highlights APESHIT named after the mid-record dip. "Insult to Injury" closes on an uplifting note that the Sputnik review singled out for lyrics you can connect with without a decoder ring. Start with the videos for "Aimless Endeavor" and "Death to Traitors," then play the whole thing from the top.

What the critics said

The contemporary Christian and underground press mostly cheered. APESHIT called it "strikingly good" from "one of the most promising bands to emerge in recent years." Weaver put it in the Tooth & Nail Top 100 and said it was "heralded by many in 2003" and "still remains a favorite from this era in Solid State's history." Cross Rhythms was the clear dissent, and even that review admitted both styles were played proficiently on their own. The lasting complaint, when there is one, is that the soft-to-heavy pattern can feel samey across ten tracks. The lasting praise is that when the pattern lands, especially on "Death to Traitors" and "Aimless Endeavor," few Solid State records from that year hit harder.

The verdict

We side with the believers. Failure On isn't inventing a new language. It's mastering one that As Cities Burn and Haste the Day were also speaking in those years: big melody, sudden weight, faith without a brochure. Cross Rhythms wanted creepier melodies. Fair. What Beloved delivered instead is bright, fist-raising post-hardcore that still sounds like a Saturday night and a Sunday morning in the same song, and that collision is exactly why the record stuck. "Death to Traitors" alone is worth the price of admission. The rest of the album keeps up more often than it drops off. Beloved broke up less than two years later. This is the record they left, and it holds.

8/10

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