Rectify "Have Mercy..." CD
[Garden of Exile]
Here's more intense metalcore from The Netherlands, this time blending a lot of death metal styled influences drawing from what I consider to be the base European metalcore style that solidified its roots in the 90's, but tossing in some thick dissonant chords that have far more potential than any of the other styles represented herein. The songwriting's a mixed bag, with most of the material coming across alright, while a few songs suffer from some weak riffs or too much reliance on tremolo picking or similar sounding chord progressions that aren't that powerful. I like the searing screams, but the vocals are mixed in a way that makes them overbearing, and I think the recording is the biggest culprit in holding this disc back. The bass tone is nice and thick and really adds a lot of round low-end, and I can live with the production despite it being kind of crispy, but the guitars and vocals need work. The vocals are a little thin and have a lot of noisiness happening, while the guitars are loud but have a rugged midrange distortion that's kid of muddy and also has excess noise involved - so the mix ends up somewhat cluttered, and the guitar tone isn't very efficient at all. The guitar tone needs a lot more aggression and in your face distortion, especially in midpaced bruisers like "Placed on Earth", which would be awesome songs with a heavier and more pummeling recording. I definitely think those slightly slower songs are more powerful, as all the tremolo picking really gets stale quickly and offers no great force or impact; whereas chunky numbers that keep it streamlined, such as "Longing to Be", are definitely more memorable. "Brought Into Existence" is another of the more dissonant and pounding tracks, and it feels a little less typical in riffing style, which I like. Among the more energetic of the faster tracks is "Human Choice", which is actually longer than the other tunes as well, so it's nice that they achieve some balance there. The layout's strange on this one, using 90% flat black with tiny text for the lyrics, placing the band logo on the cover in a gloss overlay (which is a damn nice touch). Then the center spread is a photo of two women doing kung-fu, and the back cover is a picture of Earth taken from Apollo 12!? Very odd. The lyrics are fairly brief and sometimes repetitious, but cover atypical topics such as the way that mankind if responsible for the decisions that are destroying the world around us and such. There's a lot of potential here and those dissonant riffs are incredibly promising, but they definitely need to tighten their performances and work on the recording to properly represent their work. I think the songwriting needs to progress as well, but I have a feeling that a better sound alone would help this full-length out a lot. Despite being hard on this I'm pretty sure I'd really like this band under better circumstances. (5/10)
Running time - 34:35, Tracks: 11
[Notable tracks: Placed on Earth, Longing to Be, Brought Into Existence]
Garden of Exile Records - http://www.gardenofexile.nl

This review has been displayed 1183 times.