With this EP a few former members of Burn it Down and Upheaval crank out some brutal metalcore that borders on death metal. There are lots of burly grooves, some faster hardcore chord progressions, vicious breakdowns, aggressive vocal screams, etc. At times a little bit of dissonance and some thrashy picking patterns come to the fore, as does a little bit of melody or even some dual guitar harmonies, but not in a trendy way... there's no Swedish metalcore crap here at all. The recording is really holding this one back in my mind, though. What I don't really like is the fact that the guitar tone is a little dirty and entirely too loud. Everything sounds muddy because the guitars are way out front, and they posses the most texture, so everything else is left as a lumpy mess in the distance. I can't really hear any bass most of the time, and the vocals fall back in with the drums. The guitars need to be a bit smoother and drop back in with the other instruments, and everything then needs more volume and more brightness. A lot of force is being lost. Aside from that my only real problem is that the writing is sort of boring. Despite the presence of a few standouts most of these songs are too moderately paced and similar to one another to do any real damage, so even though the disc runs less than 30 minutes it's sort of tiresome. "My Place of Rest" definitely stands out as a bit more interesting in its rhythmic arrangements and slow, dark arpeggios... and I'd definitely like to hear more of that variety, because most of the other songs are fairly interchangeable. The layout's alright. I like the way the traycard looks more than anything else. The color scheme is nice, and the font used for the band logo/tracklist is really cool, but the booklet sort of has some issues. For one thing the imagery that is collaged together doest gel very well, it's close to being perfect, but you can really tell where images overlap and things like that, and the text inside is really bulky and busy. It takes up too much space and is sort of overwhelming on the eyes. The lyrics are bitter and deal with personal turmoil and things of that nature. "Born into a world without warning's embrace, I despise to live at all..." or "The weight of the world is weighing me down, Don't try to apologize, Already too late, Just get out of my face, away, Don't embarrass yourself, You waste of life, To hell with you all." This one's not ringing any bells with me just yet. If they'd clean up the mix and kick in a little bit more speed I think their power would shoot through the roof, but you never know...
[Skeptic]
Running time - 23:21, Tracks: 7
[Notable tracks: My Place of Rest, Unknown Reflections]
Skeptic Productions - http://www.harakiri666.com/skeptic/
