Sentence "War" CD
[Goodlife]
This is some brutal fuckin' metalcore from Italy with some insanely sick vocal screams that are about as easy to understand as those in 25 ta Life, but they're not as annoying. Musically the songs are in the vein of mid-90's European metalcore, mixing a large quantity of ultra heavy NYHC sounding chord progressions with note-based Slayer riffs and things of that nature. The result comes off sounding like a combination of All Out War, Earth Crisis (circa "Destroy the Machines"), and 25 ta Life, with some of that European flare thrown in (a little bit of near death metal riffing, and so on). There's not a lot of variety here, and quite honestly aside from a few faint vocal variations or the occasional melodic lead guitar line, many of these songs sound very similar to one another. That doesn't particularly bother me since the disc is fairly short, but in the future I'd like to hear them try something more, because I think they have the ability at their disposal. I'm not that fond of the production, but I can get used to it to the point where I'm able to just sit back and enjoy the metalcore onslaught. I think the vocals are recorded really well, and the guitar tone is pretty damn heavy, but there's barely any bass guitar in there at all, and the drums are way too rigid. Thankfully the drums are in the lower range of the rigid scale, so they do have some punch... but a warmer, natural drum sound would undoubtedly help them out a great deal. Louder bass would also clear up some of the minor issues that the guitar tone possesses, but it could be worse. Not surprisingly the layout consists mostly of colors associated with camouflage and images of soldiers and weaponry and things like that. It looks pretty good. I like the front cover more than anything else, though. The lyrics constantly reference war, extinction, demons, assassins, and forms of other militaristic words like attack, conquer, slaughter, etc. But honestly I'm not exactly sure where they're going with all of this. There are some mentions of justice and truth, as well as corporate destruction, but everything seems pretty vague. They include a statement under the CD that is equally confusing, "...this is my statement against this fuckin' holy war, my statement against humanity's lust, against the horrible feeling of revenge. This is my statement. To educate. To fight. To survive in the wood. To win. To stop this irrational genocide..." Okay, ummm... but I don't feel educated here because I don't know what you're talking about. Anyone? Fuck it. I don't even care. This is one of the better European metalcore releases I've heard in awhile. I'm glad there are still bands over there sticking to the genre's better half. Hopefully next time around they'll drop some even more impressive jams... (7/10)
Running time - 34:48, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: To React, Another Strife, Shades of Salvation]
Goodlife Recordings - http://www.goodliferecordings.com

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