Vinyl version of last year’s demo from this East Bay act, and it sounds wonderfully savage slapped onto wax. Four Winds Away hark back to the early days of the millennium, playing metalcore that manages to blend melody, brutality and dynamism to killer effect. Huge metallic WHUMPS are dropped amid big, epic, ringing moments while ferrety, treble-heavy riffs threaten to screwdriver your eyes out. For the most part the vocals are coughed up and raspy, occasionally dropping to a lower register to elevate the heaviness or cleaning themselves up for a bout of mushily tasteful melody. Beyond being played impeccably, Four Winds Away have also dialled things to just the right level of pomposity: the strings and moments of spoken-word theatricality help raise the drama to a point of desperate feverishness, but the band never allow things to tip over into parody. There are only four tracks here but there’s a lot going on – more than enough to chew your way through if the likes of Arkangel, Day Of Suffering, Deadeyesunder and Grade happen to scratch a very particular turn-of-the-century itch.
