Light This City first released The Hero Cycle in 2003 on a label that I can’t find absolutely anything on. Perhaps that’s why it’s being re-released on Prosthetic. Anyway, The Hero Cycle was the first of 4 albums to be released by this band with a rather short lived career. THC, to shorten things up is a tight album. The riffs and drums sound good and the production is very nice too. However, there is something that makes me hate it.

The core members of Light This City are Ben Murray on Drums and Laura Nichol singing. The line up changed over the years, for reason unknown to me, but they have always seemed to recruit really good guitar players with a lot of melody. You can see this throughout Remains Of The Gods right on through to Stormchaser, their post-disbanding release. If you like the instrumentation on the last three albums but never got to hear The Hero Cycle, you will probably still enjoy that here as well. What you may not like is the vocals.

The vocals on The Hero Cycle are Laura Nichol’s worst. With more of an early metalcore sound, she drastically changed going in to Remains Of The Gods and sounded much better from there on out. The vocals on The Hero Cycle are very annoying to me. They sound like someone trying too hard to scream and growl at the same time and that’s probably exactly what it is. If you can listen past the vocals this is a pretty good album.

So here is my final thought on The Hero Cycle; a good composition and show of musical talent and overall good record but the vocals ruin it for me. If you like Light This City and you don’t have The Hero Cycle, maybe you’ll buy it to complete your collection of the bands discography. You might hate the vocals like I do, but then again you might be able to tolerate them. Good Record, bad vocals.