Dark and hammering hardcore with an ugly metallic hearbeat that crushes with these jarringly heavy riffs that stomp your skull. Germany is not where I imagined this band coming from, but there we are. The vocals are not in the metalcore growl, but screamed with the kind of inflamed larynx torture that is convincing they are angry enough to make this kind of music. There is an atmosphere that haunts the periphery over the guitar sound. It gives enough of a sonic edge to what they are doing to make the brutal nature of it even more punishing. Though three songs in, they hit the wall of effectiveness and need to switch it up a bit.
"creep." They do not give you much more room to breathe, though the nuance they do attach proves to be effective, and what their overall sound could benefit from. He begs you to die for him, with enough passion to make you a believer, it's not the same kind of CrossFit motivational sermons you get from most hardcore bands. Even as abrasive as they are, it still feels like hardcore is at the heart of what they are doing here, and metalcore is just a marketing label. "shattered glass" is an equal part confrontational and bludgeoning. There are no breakdowns, but an angular riff that bends time and space, in the machine-like crunch it gathers strength for.
They keep hitting you with similar methods of punishment, which give marginally more groove for " death/ rebirth." It launches into a more feral blasting in some parts, and sometimes hits with more deliberate muscle. Their eponymous anthem finds a faster attack in place when you have been numbed out to the pounding already. "loner" has a more deliberate syncopation to its hammering attack that is laced with abimance amid the fury. It is when they pour on the speed that things get lost in the blur. By the time we get to 'hell.high.water" they are beginning to hit me like a cross between Knocked Loose and Harms Way. This remains a fair comparison on the last two songs, though, with a rawer, more feral mood in places on "stray" They navigate through the songs with machine like precision, unpacking a great deal of twisting riffs within each song. Their last song is more jagged and emotionally desperate. I will give this album a 9, while it might not be dynamic or melodic enough for my personal tastes it is heavy as fuck and this guys know what they are doing so it is hard to deny.
10.2
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