"Describing the band's debut full-length, Voices Through Wires, Dour Cursiva's label, Hold True Recordings, cites Converge and The Red Chord as similar artists, and they are telling you the truth. Imagine those two bands in a fight to the death--that's pretty close to the result.
Boasting a great recording that doesn't sacrifice any instrument in the maelstrom, each song on Voices Through Wires features more chaos, time changes, and dissonance than most garden variety metalcore bands can concoct in a whole album. And while certain bands (like Beneath The Massacre) can play mind-blowingly complex songs and not come up with anything I find memorable, on Voices Through Wires, there is something strangely cohesive about the songwriting that keeps my attention from start to finish. Maybe it's the well-placed, subtly melodic passages that are woven into just the right spots to give the material some necessary breathing room; one way or the other, I'm strangely drawn to the album for repeated listens for a couple of months now. Effortlessly shifting from one dark place into another, there is no question in my mind that Dour Cursiva know what they're doing. This is one of the best New England bands I've heard in a while.
The music is impossible to pin down to any kind of traditional "A-B-A-B-C-B" or similar structure, so if that's as far as your attention span goes then you will hate it. The lyrics (socially aware, not evil or stupidly emo) don't follow any discernable verse-chorus pattern either, which ratchets up the already tense and challenging listening experience. On top of all of this, the album is mastered with no space between tracks, so it sounds like a continual bludgeoning for the first 30 minutes or so, until album closer "Eaton St." (the most recognizably riff-oriented song herein) brings the listener back down from the rush. Like with any Origin album, the first couple of spins are pretty overwhelming and you might become lost and/or discouraged, but it's worth the effort!
Check out some tracks from the album at the band's MySpace page."
B+ -Mark Fields
http://gaspetc.com/Trax_Spring08.html
There's also a negative review that calls Jake nu-metal and complains that it's not catchy.
