by Stewart Mason
After the more varied sound of their 2007 debut Going to the Gallows, the second album by Connecticut metalcore outfit Emmure sounds disappointingly one-dimensional. Singer Frank Palmeri still shifts back and forth between a standard issue death growl and a more melodic clean vocal style, but these ten songs tend to stick to the same template of stuttering unison riffs and blast beats, so much so that there are times when it's hard to tell when one song ends and the next begins. (Seriously, the transition between the opening "Young, Rich and Out of Control" and "Sound Wave Superior" is negligible.) There are moments of power and release to be found on The Respect Issue -- the "I'm so over it" refrain on "Tales from the Burg" rocks hard -- but far too much of the album finds Emmure stuck in a post-hardcore rut that they should be able to rise above.