Thine Eyes Bleed "In the Wake of Separation" CD
[The End]
Ehhh, brutal truth be told, this is another disappointing release from The End.  Whereas I'm accustomed to enjoying the label's penchant for creative artists, this disc merely offers up a little over a half-hour of by the books death/thrash from these Canadians.  Don't get me wrong, I love thrash, but the generic vocal snarls and pseudo Swedish trappings of this effort are a little too commonplace these days, so it's really not doing anything for me.  Expect lots of alternate picking riffs, a few annoying pinch harmonics, a couple of hints at old school thrash or death metal, and... as the rather lame band name might suggest, some chunky metalcore leanings as well - be it slower, moshier breaks or subtly dissonant riffs that feel more "-core" related than metal based.  I'd use those associations pretty lightly with this stuff, but the influences are there.  It's of little concern though, because the bottom line is that this is a pretty boring CD that offers nothing new and sounds like a hell of a lot of other bands out there, so how they ended up on a label like The End Records is beyond me.  I mean, there's actually a fucking song called "Corpse You Up".  Yes, you read that correctly.  "Corpse You Up".  And indeed it is one of the groovier and more obnoxious tracks as well, despite one awesome sludgy break dead in the middle of the piece.  It's just one of those discs where there are some cool riffs scattered around, but the writing is jumbled and incongruous, so there's not a lot of flow to it and it's generally stale anyway, so despite teasers of variety ("Live to Die" brings in some faint singing vocals, for example) it's still an uninteresting disc that stacks riffs together through tons and tons of changes (though not in the chaotic sense) rather than really thinking about how the songs should be constructed.  And shit, in the end most of these songs sound the same anyway.  It's like they took half of their riffs from The Haunted's weaker tunes, threw in some melodic Swedish death metal, and let the current rage of metalcore pick up the leftovers - while dragging Gorguts along for a scarce few promising affairs such as portions of the twisting and turning "Sliver" (which, again, is inconsistent and chock full of filler surrounding the riffs that are actually good).  The recording's alright.  A little rough around the edges, and there's not much bass guitar in the mix at all (yet the band's big "point of interest" is that their bassist is Tom Araya's brother), but it would get ‘em by if the songwriting was stronger.  I think the guitar tone's pretty effective, it's nice and heavy and definitely drives the material, and the vocals sound okay despite the vocal performance lacking force, but I'm missing the bass presence and the drums could stand to be a bit more robust as well.  Elements of the percussion are on point but the kicks are a little flimsy, so... they need to clean up a few rough spots overall.  Visually it could be better, could be worse.  The text is legible and it gets the job done, but it doesn't have the degree of quality I'd prefer it to have.  Lyrics?  Ehhh.  Metal.  "Shadows cover the blackened sky, haunting past will now rise, Conscience crumbles when hit with vengeance..."  Whatever, you know?  Is it a competent disc?  Yeah, it is.  But it's simply not very good.  There's a certain degree of quality to it all around, but there's no one song that stands out to me, and I'm definitely hoping that this disc isn't indicative of where The End is going to continue setting their sights in the future. (5/10)
Running time - 36:18, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: no particular songs strike me]
The End Records - http://www.theendrecords.com

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