Secrets

Fragile Figures

This past April, lead singer Xander Bourgeois quit Secrets to focus on his sobriety, emphasizing that there was no bad blood between him and his former bandmates. Not long after this, the San Diego, CA-based band announced Aaron Melzer would be taking over vocals, and that they were hard at work on their sophomore album, Fragile Figures.

And here we are. Musically, the album is great. The post-hardcore band shines with driving guitars, complex melodies and Melzer’s exceptional screams mixed with both gang and clean vocals. Several songs feature melodic strings and piano tracking, giving them a fuller, more epic sound.

Lyrically, however, some of the songs seem unnecessarily angry (a few contain explicit language), though overall, there seems to be a theme of rising above the despair and depression and escaping the past. “It’s never too late for a fresh start, a new hope / Nothing is set in stone,” sings Richard Rogers – who handles the clean vocals as well as plays guitar – in “How we Survive.” And in “Infinite Escape,” Melzer screams, “This world has taken so much from me / But I refuse to let it keep me down,” while Rogers sings “You’re not as hopeless as you think / Let music take away the pain / She’ll be your infinite escape.”

The final track, “Sleep Well, Darling,” is romantic ballad that – while not bad on its own – doesn’t seem to quite fit the rest of the album.