Born From Pain "In Love With the End" CD
[Metal Blade]
Hell yeah.  Holland's Born From Pain is back with their third full-length, this time more metallic than ever, definitely taking a more Slayer-esque twist to their chugging brand of Hatebreed-ish metalcore.  The song structures are still pretty basic and moderately paced, chock full of massive moshiness and strained vocal shouts, but there's a little more of a thrash influence happening to some of the picking patterns, even if the tempos don't really get that fast.  "The New Hate" messes with some vocal filters at times and uses lots of the aforementioned thrashy picking during the verse parts, which makes the chorus all the more catchy when it plows into a crushing rhythmic surge; "Renewal" has some dissonant riffing that totally kicks ass, along with some vicious guest vocals; the longer "Dead Code" almost has a Bolt Thrower sort of thing going on with its churning opening runs but later shifts into an almost crossover hardcore sort of gallop for a brief stint; while "Hour of the Wolf" has kind of a sludgy edge to some of its riffing and is a pretty powerful ending for the record as a whole.  The recording sounds pretty good.  I'm generally not that big on Tue Madsen's work because I feel like he always uses drum tones that are too clicky and rigid, but he's done a pretty nice job with this one.  The percussion is a little taut, so it took me a few songs to get used to it, but there's a good balance of density there as well.  The guitar tone is fuckin' great, too.  It's heavy as hell but not at all overproduced, and there's a good texture to it so that it's not a suffocating level of distortion or anything.  The vocals also sound great, so my only minor complaint is that I can't really make out any of the basslines at all, and that could've helped beef things up even more in the center of the mix.  No big deal though, the overall sound is totally professional and perfectly clear.  The layout's more good than bad, but I have some issues with it.  The cover looks fucking awesome, and I really like that simple, bleak imagery.  But elsewhere the text can be kind of pixilated looking and sort of hard on the eyes, and I'm just not into the overuse of posed band photos and stuff like that.  Lyrically it's about what you'd expect as far as dealing with life's struggles and all that stuff: "Looking back to find it, What was lost, faded grey, Thinking how the failed ways of my life haunt me today, Wasted years so empty, Wasted years to mourn, Taking life the harder way, too much that's dead and gone..."  All in all this is certainly a record that should damn well please the band's past followers, while likely earning them some new fans due to the stronger songwriting sensibilities offered throughout the record.  It's still not something that's terribly original, but they're definitely expanding their boundaries a bit and offering more variety than they used to (not to mention more variety than a lot of their contemporaries), and that's cool.  I don't mind when this style of music isn't all that inventive anyway, because I don't think it's supposed to be!  These dudes know what they're doing and they do it right, so I'm all for it and remain a fan.  Good work.  I hope jumping up to Metal Blade is going to bring some more attention to these guys, they deserve it.  This is definitely their best record yet. (7/10)
Running time - 34:23, Tracks: 10
[Notable tracks: The New Hate, Kill it Tonight, Hour of the Wolf]
Metal Blade Records - http://www.metalblade.com

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