Jesus Piece : "...So Unknown"

This Philly Metal core band has collected a huge amount of hype for a band who has clawed their way up from the underground. The opener is pretty typical for what modern metal core bands do these days. Nothing that really stands out from the pack. Things do get both darker and more polished on the second song. Hard Core - which is the core of metal core, has punk roots which can almost be heard at times amid the heavy chugging. Vocalist Aaron Heard sometimes goes down into lower more death metal like growls. But that isn't exactly going above and the beyond, The darker touches of atmosphere are really the only thing that sets these guys apart. Bands like Code Orange have certainly done this all before and better. That is not to say these guys are not good at what they do, when it leans more into grooves. "Tunnel Vision" almost has more of a Slipknot feel. I appreciate these more grooving moments more than what their peers do when they try to go in a more technical death metal direction. 

"FTBS" just kind of chugs it's way into being background noise, despite the tight syncopation of the riffing. This album is really well mixed and produced, so it sounds great in terms of the presentation of the tones, but it feels like they have run out ideas by the time we get to "Silver Lining' as the stock metal core riffs are being pulled out. Yes, there is a pretty cool sounding dissonance to the riffs. They are also adept at using enough restraint so they do not just hammer you with punk speed, but punish you with a series of stomping head bobbing riffs. There are going to be a great deal of hipster journalists who normally would not give this kind of metal core a second glance , praising this album because of the singers race, and their desire for metal to be more inclusive. I doubt these are the merits which Heard wants to be judged by. I imagine he wants success based off his abilities that take those things out of the equation. 

The songs slowly begin to take on a more uniform feel. The limited vocal colors used play into this. Sometimes they try to place his voice in different places in the mix to compensate for the bland dynamics, but once we are at "Profane" those tricks have stopped working. The guitars manage to balance things out with their knack for shifting riffs. All of the songs are under four minutes, so their writing style is very compact. Not matter how punchy the riffs are  I have lost the ability to tell these songs apart even when the riffs drop down to the bass line of "An Offering to the Night". The riff leading into "Stolen Life" is more tense, as the drops simplify things down to a grove before they explode back out at you. The drummer is the most talented member of this band for sure. 

They close the album with the more powerful crashing slam of  "the Bond". This proves to be another song that show cases their drummer. Riff wise the wheel is not being reinvented here. The atmosphere feels like it's an after thought. They check off all the boxes of what a fan of metal core might want, as long as those do not include any actual singing or memorable melodies and barely anything except grooves to provide hooks. For that reason I will round this down to an 8. Is it well made and heavy ? Yes, perhaps more so than most metal core albums of their ilk, but when it comes to songwriting lacking, so they 8 is keeping people who are into metal core in mind, if you just listen to music for the quality of song writing and heaviness does not sway your judgement in that regard then round it down further to a 7.5