Labels: Deathwish
Review by: Kunal Nandi
Blinding light? Ascension? These few ominous religious overtones are thankfully smothered by the utterly unholy bouts of hardcore barely contained on this, the band’s first full-length. Vocalist Brian Lovro, despite leaving ample time for his vocal cords to recover since the legendary Threadbare split up (leaving us with far too few records), has obviously been yelling his head off in the wilderness judging by the totally shredded performance he provides here. Aside from him, the other chaps bring some very heavy and thick downtuned riffery, which crushes whilst still retaining a scratchy distortion, all very proficiently played. There’s a refreshingly nasty reliance on the power of pure noise, with not many easy hooks to latch onto, so breakdowns are rhythmically-based.
It’s a little bit of a guilty pleasure, seeing as it’s basically moshy metalcore on a label I don’t hold in especially high regard, but fuck me, feel the DENSITY of this thing! The wall of sound barely contained on the disc is massagingly brutal, sitting just about on the right side of chugginess, with fresh shifts into odd timings and jazzy interludes that flow well. Chug, metal, hardcore, punk “” they’re all combined to immensely satisfying effect, although the monotonous nature of it may make a full 42 minutes perhaps too much to digest in one go.