Fear Before the March of Flames is another one of those hard-to-categorize bands trying their hardest to not be just an average boring, unoriginal, nonsensical hardcore or screamo or whatever you want to call them band. But damn, can they be addicting to listen to the first time around for the sheer curiosity to hear what weird creations they'll come up with next. They're one of those all-over-the-place bands much like Alexisonfire, Scatter the Ashes, Silent Drive, Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan, who eschew conventional verse-chorus-verse song structure, going from soft to insanely heavy, singing to screaming, well, you know the type. Once I first heard the minute-long creepy intro track "Absolute Future" go straight into the guitar-thrashing "Drowning the Old Hag" I sure as hell didn't know what to expect, but once I heard the soft-turned-apocalyptic "Taking Cassandra to the End of the World Party," I realized these guys really knew how to churn out a real post-hardcore (I guess that's what you'd call them) epic, and I eventually appreciated them for it. You can feel singers David Marion and Adam Fishers' pain and anguish as they scream on tracks like the complex "Mouth" and the surprisingly somewhat catchy "High as a Horse." The majority of these tracks are so weird and shockingly interesting that you had to appreciate them; such as "Ten Seconds in Los Angeles," with its devilish Darth Vader-ish growling appearing unexpectedly, "The Waiting Makes Me Curious," which was a lethargic, suicide-driving depression fest if I had ever heard one and the freakish "Dog Sized Bird" (how do they come up with these titles?). The remainder is plagued by just plain old "weirdness for the sake of weirdness" But with 15 exhausting (in a good way) songs on the whole album, I was only able to talk about the first half (for fear of writing an 800 word review), but it must be said that The Always Open Mouth is one of those albums people will either love or hate because it's so unstructured and (yes, I know it's overused) all-over-the-place. For me, it's not one of those albums I could listen to over and over again, but because of Fear Before's desire to create insane musical fusion that sets them apart from sounding just like any other band, I appreciate them and can see how people (and not just hardcore or metal fans) would absolutely love their music.