REVIEW: Your Memorial - Redirect (2012)

Artist: Your Memorial
Album: Redirect
Rating: 4.8/5
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In an era where so many bands release albums with nonsensical titles and track names, it can be tough to glean what exactly the band is trying to impart to the listener. Sure tongue-in-cheek remarks and gimmicky puns are great for drawing attention and catching one’s eye, but more often than not, there is no meaning behind the content. It falls flat, failing to leave a lasting impression on the listener. Your Memorial’s latest effort, Redirect, however does just what its name would imply–it refines, focuses and indeed redirects the band into previously uncharted realms of overlapping harshness and atmosphere.

Redirect is much like a voyage through space. At times, tranquil and delightfully stagnant, the album is glued together with bits of post-rock styled elements used as interludes. These interludes function as spacious, luxurious gaps between the hard-hitting elements of the release, which line up like a sequence of asteroid belts. Pelting the listener with aggression and passion in the form of grinding, groovy breakdowns. This Twin-Cities based metalcore quartet brilliantly fuse melodic, lighter segments together with crushing, climactic heaviness, topped off with sparse–but tasteful–instrumental sections to create a listening experience which places the listener in the passenger seat of a voyage into a galaxy created by the tedious and careful amalgam of precarious elements.

The grandiose nature with which Your Memorial–and the listener–disembark upon the journey that is Redirect is subtle. As the album opens quietly with a sample and some ambient sounds, the listener is given just enough time to buckle their seatbelts before they are thrust into the album’s title track, “Redirect.” From then on out, the album is a bumpy ride, dragging the listener along–albeit willingly–through tracks which hit both heavily and melodically in a left-right fashion. “Eternity” and “Trial and Triumph” showcase this facet of the album most efficiently. “Eternity” starts with a bang, but features an almost needed break from the heaviness about half-way through, where the vocals disappear, and the smooth guitar and elegant drumming are permitted to shine. “Trial and Triumph” functions almost in an inverse manner, building up to a stunning, climactic midpoint packed with both tasteful, clean vocals (which are a more frequent appearance on Redirect than their past efforts, but are done so well, one almost wonders where they’ve been this whole time) and heavy, crushing chugs that simultaneously kiss the listener on the cheek while punching him or her in the jaw.

In this manner, the nature of the entire album follows the same structure that many of the individual tracks follow. Opening with a deceptive calm, building up to a breath-taking climax, and slowly–but barely–descending to a calming conclusion, Redirect takes the listener on a slightly linear but completely enjoyable journey. The album not only is a stellar collection of individual songs, but a behemoth of an experience which begs to be listened to as a whole–something that cannot frequently be said for a metalcore album. The touches of spacial atmosphere, hints of post-rock, “djent” and groove that are sprinkled throughout the album, along with the welcome niche the clean vocals have found themselves save the album from what could have been it’s great undoing–monotony. While it is a masterful creation, it is a long album. Long, however, should not be mistaken for overbearing or obtrusive, as Redirect is just long enough for the listener to find themselves lost in, without begging to find their way home. 

By Connor Welsh/Eccentricism

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REVIEW/HISTORY LESSON: I Shot the Sheriff - 2007 Demo [EP]

Artist: I Shot the Sheriff

Album: Demo (2007) [EP]

Rating: 4/5

Heroes are important: in times of dire need, they give people hope. In times of stagnancy, they provide movement and inspiration–progression, if you will. While “progression” might not be the first word that comes to mind when listening to Californian deathcore group, I Shot the Sheriff, the listener cannot deny the influence their 2007 demo has had on deathcore bands today–from the “greats” like Suicide Silence and Chelsea Grin to that annoying start up project that practices in your neighbor’s garage.

The year is 2007, and deathcore was in a state of turmoil. Amidst the plethora of emerging “-core” genres, deathcore was far and away the newest of them, and it’s combination of bi-polar elements made it attractive to metalheads seeking new extremes, and spin-kicking scenesters looking to gain mosh-pit badges of honor. Whether it would have any lasting impact on the scene or function as a transient shit-stain on the underpants of hardcore was (and still is) anyone’s guess. I Shot the Sheriff leapt into the fray with all guns blazing, with the mindset that in order to preserve deathcore, a no-holds-barred approach needed to be taken. Fortunately for us fans, that mindset served its purpose.

Leading the charge with immensely varied vocal styles and brutally straightforward lyrics, the 2007 Demo features elements of deathcore we all take for granted today. Quick sweeps interspersed between heavy chugging and pounding bass follow the vocals in I Shot the Sheriff’s aural stampede. Indeed, sections like the climactic breakdown in “Denouement” feel akin to being trampled by a raging rabble of rhinoceros. The drums provide a crushing, down-tempo brutal backdrop while the guitars trudge along, crushing everything in their path. While the lyrics are lacking (and often range from okay to downright terrible), the vocal delivery tops it all off with wrenching anguish and pure hate.

Admittedly, listening to I Shot the Sheriff’s demo now is underwhelming. The 2007 Demo isn’t meant to attract new listeners to the genre–not these days at least. Rather, it’s an opportunity for dedicated fans of extant deathcore giants (Thy Art is Murder, et al) to explore their roots. However, that still leaves I Shot the Sheriff sounding generic (in a genre they helped breathe life into) and lyrically abysmal (in a genre not known for lyrical prowess). These hurdles are small by their very nature, however, in broader context, they become minuscule. The listener is often too engrossed in the straightforward, break-neck brutality that the EP offers, rather than stuck getting caught in the nuances of the lyrical atrocities sparsely sprinkled throughout the release. 

So while it’s easy to write off I Shot the Sheriff as “old news” and uninventive, this isn’t necessarily true. I Shot the Sheriff’s 2007 Demo influenced bands who went on to influence some of the largest names in deathcore, all the while showing remarkable promise–if they had continued, where would they be today? Were it not the vocal delivery and angry, angst laden lyrics which influenced bands like We Are the End and Thy Art is Murder, many bands tearing up local and national scenes around the world wouldn’t be...well, they wouldn’t be. So if you have Infinite Death memorized to the pinch harmonic, and can play through every We Are the End track on YouTube, then treat yourself to a bit of musical research and give I Shot the Sheriff a spin–who knows, you might even end up starting a band.

By: Connor Welsh/Eccentricism

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REVIEW: Be'lakor - Of Breath and Bone

Artist: Be’lakor

Album: Of Breath and Bone

Rating: 4.5/5

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I don’t know about you, but track lengths over five minutes consistently register as a unique mix of foreboding and promising when I’m first looking at an album. Seven minutes is a lot of time for a band to fill–especially without running the risk of getting repetitious. However, it’s all the more time for the artist to really reach out and engross the listener in a more thorough “experience,” so to speak. Australian melodic death metal giants Be’lakor manage to do an astounding amount of the latter with virtually none of the former on their latest full-length effort, Of Breath and Bone.

Loaded with dark, dynamic melodies, Of Breath and Bone is packed to the brim with engaging heaviness and technical brilliance sure to grab the listener by the ears. The progressive, riff-laden nature of the guitar is accentuated by subtle, but talented bass work and drumming. While the drumming isn’t show-stopping or distracting, it provides a stellar, atmospheric canvas for the guitar work to soar over, and paint an intense aural masterpiece. Overtop of the bass and drum work, the vocals coexist with the guitar, and while at times, the two seem to compete for attention, more often than naught, they work together to create a dynamo of explosive, invigorating death metal.

Clocking in at 57 minutes, Be’lakor’s Of Breath and Bone can’t be all intensity all the time. Packed in between the miniature climaxes in each track are moments of astral atmospheric brilliance, which give the listener a brief reprieve from the rigorous, riff-laden attack which is pervasive throughout the album. Tracks “Fraught” and “The Dream and the Waking” showcase this aspect of Be’lakor’s dynamism best. “The Dream and the Waking,” while dominating the other album’s tracks at nearly nine and a half minutes, functions as the climax of the entire album, with both brilliant riff-work and moments of near spacial atmosphere. What makes this track–and the moments within it–so brilliant is how smoothly the Australian melo-death masters transition from segment to segment, never once seeming forced or rough.

In fact, the only tangible moment of roughness comes from some of the album’s vocal aspects. While typically vocally solid, Of Breath and Bone occasionally includes a part-growled, part-spoken, part-burped vocal style which is off-putting and frequently sounds out-of-place. Album opener “Abeyance” utilizes this vocal style most heavily, and while it is by no means bad, it just seems to clash with the instrumental vibe surrounding the burp-esque mutterings. More often than not, though, the vocals function with the drums and bass as a mechanism of atmosphere for the guitars to work within, either speeding up and intensifying or slowing and harmonizing the track.

Be’lakor waste no time in letting the listener know that this isn’t their first melodic death metal rodeo. Careful riff-writing and song structure yields stunning soundscapes to be found within every track, and ultimately defining the entire album. Of Breath and Bone is a fluid, astoundingly well-rounded and engaging effort, even in spite of the rare vocal hiccup. So if you’re like me, and looked at the length of each track wondering, “alright fellas, how are you gonna make this work?” Then you ought waste no more time wondering, as all fifty-some minutes comprising Of Breath and Bone are nothing short of thoroughly engrossing melodic death metal dynamic enough for anyone to find something in–metalhead or otherwise. 

By: Connor Welsh/Eccentricism

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REVIEW: Chelsea Grin - Evolve [EP]

Artist: Chelsea Grin

Album: Evolve - EP

Rating: 4/5

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Progression. One word. Three syllables. Yet, such a small notion can often times make or break a band, lest done in moderation. At one extreme, a band can quite literally refuse to change their sound, leaving all but the most loyal of fans to become bored with the sound. At the other extreme, there are bands who undergo such rapid and constant progression that their fan base is immensely varied and forced to pick and choose amongst their material. Right in the middle lie Chelsea Grin, who show with their new EP, Evolve, and addition of guitarist Jason Richardson (formerly of Born of Osiris) progression–even at the inclusion of questionable elements–can please old fans and attract new ones.

Fundamentally, Chelsea Grin are still working from the familiar footwork that was established in their debut EP. Quick, pounding drums accompanied by three guitars providing a simultaneous attack of shred and downtuned brutality assault the listener, while bipolar screeched and bellowed vocals provide the icing on the cake. Tracks like “S.H.O.T” and “Confession” feature breakdowns not unlike ones seen on Desolation of Eden’s “The Human Condition” and lead single “Recreant.” Lyrically, Evolve touches on familiar themes, with each track having a different concept, ranging from “The Second Coming”’s alternate perspective on Judgement Day and “Lillith”’s heart-chilling tale of love and loss. Like previous releases, the lyrics are only as pertinent as the vocals delivering them, and the vocals haven’t changed much from their sophomore full-length My Damnation, featuring animalistic, shredding high screams and deep, bellowed low screams vaguely reminiscent of The Black Dahlia Murder. While the vocals are by no means atrocious, they still falter at times, especially when compared to the prowess they displayed on Desolation of Eden.

How then has Chelsea Grin changed? What elements of Evolve are at all...well, evolved? The answer is two-fold, with the most constant change coming from the fretwork of new guitarist, Jason Richardson. While all of Chelsea Grin’s previous releases features some sort of (often half-hearted) technicality, a majority of it came from the drums, with the odd sweep-laden or tapped-out riff accompanying the melodic chug-chug of the other two guitars. Evolve however features consistently engaging and impressive guitar work which wouldn’t sound out of place on–you guessed it–a Born of Osiris album. Richardson’s influence is especially noticeable in Evolve’s closing track, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” in which careful fretwork builds up to a monumental solo at the close of the song. Lillith’s chorus is also wrought with sweeping shreddery that, fortunately distracts the listener from Chelsea Grin’s other modicum of progression–the clean vocals.

“What’s that?” You’re probably asking yourself. “Chelsea Grin? Clean vocals? Are talking about the same band, here?” Yes, we are, and believe it or not, they aren’t exclusively bad news. While the creepy, half-muttered, half-sung cleans pervasive throughout the single, “Lillith” are sloppy and out-of-place at best, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”’s clean sections are nothing but pleasing. This clean split (no pun intended) shows that when the band commits themselves to including the new vocal styling in a focused and concise manner, it works. “Lillith,” unfortunately shows the sloppy, half-hearted downside, offering clear evidence of the band’s lack of thought in the construction of what they (for some reason) chose to be the EP’s only single.

Evolve is just that–an evolution. It shows Chelsea Grin narrowing their sights and establishing their own sound, which isn’t so much a change so much as it a refinement of their previous efforts. However, like an evolution, it is only one step in an imperfect process which needs continuous tweaking and attention to reach a definite end result.

By Connor Welsh/Eccentricism

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REVIEW: Thirteen Bled Promises - Heliopause Fleets

Artist: Thirteen Bled Promises

Album: Heliopause Fleets

Rating: 4.75/5

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Imagine being buried alive. Trapped in a box six feet underground, suffocating as every breath you take means you’re just one breath closer to asphyxiation. The pressure is nearly palpable as the thought of your impending demise causes your heart to beast faster and your breath to quicken. This collecting pressure is much akin to Madrid-based deathcore act Thirteen Bled Promises and their debut full-length, Heliopause Fleets, a conceptual album laden with dazzling technicality and crushing brutality.

Telling the story of the Voyager 1, a NASA-commissioned space vessel and it’s botched extraterrestrial encounter, the concept behind Heliopause Fleets isn’t nearly as crucial as the manner in which the story is delivered. Saturated with unrelenting, skull-smashing brutality, the album kicks off with “Please, Keep Your Bones Inside,” a track which wastes no time in socking the listener straight in the gut. The album continues for some time at this pace, allowing the pressure to build, rapidly toggling between machine-gun speed blast beats and lighting-fast sweeps and muddy, downtuned heaviness. Each smash of the bass drum and resonating chug of every breakdown carries the album steadily towards it’s climax, as you, trapped in your pine box six feet under the Earth, scream, hoping for someone to hear you.

At this point, it isn’t long before your voice is hoarse, and your ears ache from the echoes of your own screams. Your knuckles are bloody from beating at the lid to your makeshift coffin. All the while, the pressure has been steadily building. Exasperated, you pound once more at your wooden tomb. There’s a creak, a shifting in the sediment, and the roof caves in, as tons of dirt pour through the cracked coffin and into your lungs. This moment is almost entirely analogous to “Immortal’s Tomb,” the fifth track of Heliopause Fleets. The pressure being built up throughout the first several tracks reaches its breaking point and unleashes itself in the form of nearly five minutes of relentless tech-laden brutality. A cacophony of harmonics, blast beats, chugs and sweeps await the listener as the tone of the album shifts from transient musical proficiency to an all-out, in-your-face attack of active musical brilliance.

Thirteen Bled Promises manage to create a full-length album which not only provides the listener with a solid one-off listen, but an ability to be repeated. It’s shamefully easy these days to breeze through a deathcore album and feel like deleting it after a single listen, however, with Heliopause Fleets, this isn’t the case. It’s easy for the listener to get lost in the various annals and crevices of the album listen after listen. In this manner, the only slight–and I mean slight–flaw in the album rears its head. It seems like it takes these Spanish shredders a little too long to really present just how talented they are. Once “Immortal’s Tomb” begins, the entire duration of the album is nothing short of jaw-dropping; truly a prodigal mastery of the fickle beast that is deathcore. However, the first four tracks are markedly more held back, making the familiar listener quick to skip them.

It’s been a couple months now, and while your body wasn’t recovered, there was a funeral. Your friends called it “special,” your family wept, even as they insisted it was a beautiful ceremony and they wouldn’t have changed a thing. Much like your memory, Thirteen Bled Promises create an album that will not be forgotten. Rather, Heliopause Fleets will truly live on in the playlists and scrobbles of deathcore enthusiasts across the globe, as it enters the ranks of albums by bands who have had many more years under their belts–and many more flops as well.

By Connor Welsh/Eccentricism

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REVIEW: Signal the Firing Squad - Abnegate

Artist: Signal the Firing Squad
Album: Abnegate
Rating: 5/5
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Every so often, a release becomes so built up that it seems unfathomable that it could possibly live up to its own hype. This can happen for a variety of reasons–incessant touring and advertising, internet hype-beasting, absurdly early announcement, etcetera. All of these were true for Australian deathcore giants Signal the Firing Squad, and their sophomore full-length, Abnegate. With the cult success of their debut release, Earth Crisis, combined with intense amounts of local and online promotion, the quartet were facing a release which could either enter them into a figurative deathcore hall-of-fame along with several other Aussie acts, or condemn them to a status of impending mediocrity. Fortunately for Signal the Firing Squad–and the listener–Abnegate functions as the former, as it brilliantly showcases the stunning progression and crushing brutality of these Sunshine Coast shredders.

Abnegate is a verb, and can be defined as a rejection or renunciation of valuable or commonly perceived values or facts. Signal the Firing Squad’s second album of the same name does just that, devastating what the listener’s previous experiences with deathcore might be. Every track culminates in an ideal blending of blasting snare and shredding guitar, which can seamlessly toggle into slow, pounding, bass-heavy drumming and downtuned, muddy chugging. More often than not, while the drums shift into a soul-shaking breakdown with one of the guitars following suit, the other guitar continues with a shreddy, intricate riff–the second single of the album, “Into the Mouth of the Leviathan” displays this as well as any, with a heavily middle-eastern influenced solo, laid brilliantly over a groove-laden breakdown. While the bi-polar shift in instrumentation occurs, the vocals stay constant, with shrill, sky-scraping highs and deep, nearly subterranean lows keeping the listener not just engaged, but guessing as well.

While each song is structured to flow stunningly from technical and speedy to sludgy and heavy, the songs manage to keep a very individual feel to them. By maintaining a dynamic and staggered structure, no song sounds the same as the last, or has the listener wondering, “wait, didn’t I just hear that?” While these problems might plague the average deathcore release, this is just one of many instances in which Signal the Firing Squad prove that they are far and away beyond average.

Abnegate isn’t just a masterpiece of technical deathcore on a track-by-track basis, however. Featuring two featured vocalists (both of whom members of other deathcore giants, Obey the Brave and Boris the Blade) and two instrumental interludes, there is not one point where the album sounds or feels “same-y.” Both instrumental tracks, “Pillars of Creation” and “Synapse Failure” see the band including more elements which aren’t consistent through the bulk of the album–bass heavy riffs, electronic effects and tactful inclusion of a killswitch-style effect amongst them. These tracks provide the only sort of breathing room from the listener, who is otherwise constantly smothered by the in-your-face nature of Signal the Firing Squad’s lethal combination of technicality and crushing brutality. Singles “Abominator” and “Into the Mouth of the Leviathan” feature guests Alex Erian and Daniel Sharp (respectively) keep the album vocally fresh, even when vocalist Nathan is far from boring.

Heavy, dynamic, technical and fluid are all “by-the-book” adjectives for Signal the Firing Squad’s sophomore release, Abnegate. What those words don’t properly convey is the skin-tingling sensation given by the solos, the ear-blistering speed of the blast beats, or the skull-smashing, soul-rending nature of the groovy, yet sludgy breakdowns pervasive throughout the album. If you’ve been waiting for a slamming, technical, brutal deathcore release to sink your ears into, look no further than Signal the Firing Squad’s Abnegate.

By Connor Welsh/Eccentricism

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REVIEW: Forsaken - Witness/Hell [EP]

Artist: Forsaken
Album: Witness/Hell [EP]
Rating: 4.75/5
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It’s becoming increasingly easy to write off bands in just about any genre for just about any arbitrary reason. More and more it seems common to hear about how deathcore band X “just isn’t heavy enough,” or “not technical enough” and metalcore band Y has a “mediocre singer” or “cliche album art/name/album title.” Every band seems to have to fill some sort of new and exciting niche to avoid being tossed aside and ignored after a pithy listen or two. Enter Forsaken, and their new EP Witness/Hell, which may not redefine the genre by any means, but makes for a more than worthwhile listen as it drags the listener through six layers of spine-shattering Hell.

“Wait, wait, wait,” you’re saying right now. “Is this just going to be another boring, run-of-the-mill deathcore EP by some band I won’t even remember ten minutes later?” The answer is no. While the Conneticut-based deathcore quintet don’t re-invent the genre, they provide a variety of perfectly blended elements to provide one of the most relentlessly heavy releases to hit the scene recently. Every track is a maelstrom of back-breaking chaos with little reprieve for the listener. While one guitar plays a noodling tremolo-laden lead, the other provide a downtuned, chugged-out foundation which, more often than not, is hammered into place by machine-gun speed drumming. The entire experience–metaphorically, much akin to a house–is roofed by low, guttural vocals that are just intelligible enough to keep the listener aware of the general theme of each song, which usual consists of hate-filled lyrics to fuel the microcosm of brutality present in every track.

The EP isn’t one big breakdown, either. This is perhaps where the real beauty and glimpse of actual magnificence of Witness/Hell shines through. Most tracks feature just a hint of technicality and extreme musical proficiency, laced carefully throughout the entire track. “The Hinge Factor” demonstrates this particularly well, opening with a sweeping, intricate guitar line which reappears at several points during the track. The vocals change as well to keep the listener on the edge of their seat, occasionally leaping up from murky, deep lows into piercing, screeched highs. These leaps into the realm of technical deathcore turn out to be Forsaken’s saving grace, keeping them from falling headlong into the only potential flaw for the EP.

Repetition is a deathcore band’s biggest hurdle. How to provide an uncanny, brutalizing experience without either being overwhelmingly polarizing or unbearably repetitious? Forsaken have this more-or-less down to a science. With the occasionally monotonous breakdown or same-sounding song progression, the short length of the EP along with the well-structured songs and sneaky infusion of technical time changes and dynamic melodies keeps Witness/Hell fresh. Without these elements pervasive throughout the release, Forsaken would simply have churned out another run-of-the-mill product from the cogs of the deathcore machine.

Listening to Witness/Hell is like listening to a shipwreck–in the best possible way. The unrelenting, uncompromising brutality present in every track, along with Forsaken’s penchant for the occasionally musical showboating makes Witness/Hell a near-perfect deathcore EP, so long as it is just that–an EP.

By Connor Welsh/Eccentricism

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