Clocking in at just under 14 minutes, the new album by Southern California hardcore band NAILS is nothing short of awesome. Every one of the album’s ten tracks will pummel into you unrelentingly, as good hardcore and grindcore should. The Six Feet Under Records website describes NAILS as sounding like “Entombed covering Napalm Death and Drop Dead“, which is damn near spot on. Interesting enough, the album was recorded at Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou’s Godcity recording studio, with Kurt producing. That should already tell you that this album will be good.

The album opens to immediate chaos and aural violence with the 32 second “Conform”. The term “powerviolence” becomes perfectly clear. Before you even realize that song’s over, you’re under hell-fire with more pummeling blasts, maniacal screams, and grinding and screeching guitars that continue throughout the next three tracks, nonstop. This album doesn’t seem to want to let up.

Amidst the pissed off chants of “Suffering Soul”, NAILS step back from the chaos just a bit and play some hardcore riffs with some slower groove. Nails continues the pace into the title track “Unsilent Death”.

NAILS knows how to make 14 minutes feel like a long time, and they make good use of their time. The songs blend together seamlessly at times, giving the illusion of lasting much longer. Speaking on the album’s structure, I’d believe it if this album was written as one piece of music broken up into tracks.

The album is still pummeling away in fury like a jackhammer. A short guitar solo is thrown out in “No Servant”. Now it’s back to business as usual with “Scapegoat”, which leads into the album’s longest song and closing track “Depths”. The guitars are the main voice here. Layered screeches, noise, and feedback take over a lot of the song, creating the sonic equivalent of disaster. A considerably slower and heavy as fuck riff with proper use of pinch harmonics lead the track to close with a mood if impending doom, ending the album in guitar feedback. What a perfect closer.

NAILS – Unsilent Death is a great grind album. Although short, it does exactly what it’s supposed to. If you’re a fan of Pig Destroyer, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Napalm Death, and Brutal Truth, you need to check out NAILS right away. You can stream the tracks “Your God” and “Suffering Soul” here, as well as buying the album on preorder.

NAILS – Unsilent Death gets

4/5 – Great

- JR

The deathcore scene is stagnant and slowly decaying, save for a few stand out Sumeriancore bands that decide to mix some shit up. Bands like The Faceless, Veil of Maya, and All Shall Parish actually have something extra going on and stand out as being the talent that’s ultimately saving this sub-genre from dying out.

Chelsea Grin, however, are prime example of how it can all go to shit. While they aren’t exactly the worst out there *ahemcoughOceanocough*, Chelsea Grin’s Desolation of Eden is probably the most uninspired music I’ve subjected myself to purposefully all year. There’s nothing new or exciting about this music at all.

Just what I expected. The crabcore influence is plain as day!

The riffs are nothing exciting, although there’s a hint of a decent melodic guitar line every now and then, nothing saves this album from being a wasteland of 3rd rate chugging and breakdowns. The vocals are as you’d expect at this point in the review. The highs are lackluster and the lows are just plain average. There’s even some BREEEEE going on at points. No thanks.

The breakdowns. The fucking breakdowns. In general, sometimes breakdowns are useful. But when you put them in every single song (sometimes multiple times), then you’re missing the whole point of having a breakdown in the first place. Speaking as deathcore as a whole, it’s gotten to the point where breakdowns ALL SOUND EXACTLY THE SAME. How many variations of breakdowns can possibly be written before we can just call it a day? Even the one great song on this album, “Elysium”, which is a melodic instrumental track, is plagued by the most pointless breakdown ever tacked on at the end. It’s like they didn’t even try and are throwing them in as a crutch for poor songwriting.

The only good song. I’m not even going to bother post another sample.

In summation, unless you enjoy uninspired chugging that doesn’t challenge the listener at all or want to be bored to sleep, then this is an album you should avoid. This music is as contrived as it gets.

Chelsea Grin – Desolation of Eden gets

1.5/5 – Poor

- JR

Exivious have gotten attention in “underground circles” from their first demo, but with the release of their self titled full length “Exivious“, they’ve stirred up quite a controversy (or they did, since I’m a bit late on this). The band features Tymon Kruidenier of Cynic fame on guitars along with Michel Nienhuis, Stef Broks of Textures fame on drums, and Robin Zielhorst of Cynic/Blue Man Group fame on bass. Jazz fusion/metal is nothing new. Atheist, and Cynic really launched the style back in the 90’s Florida death metal scene. But since then the genre has changed. Bands like Planet X, Continuo Renacer, etc. have taken a different approach by making the metal/jazz fusion combination a lot more jazzy. Exivious continue along this line with their newest release. There are some heavy riffs here and there but don’t expect anything death metal worthy. The riffs are still very memorable though. The guitars also have a lot of defined jazz fusion soloing with lots of legato technique, and a smooth horn like tone. The fretless bass Robin lays down is absolutely exceptional. He does more than keep rhythm, he makes the music sway, makes it pulses, makes it smooth. I’m not a drummer so I can’t say much here, but he certainly is good and has some nice fills and sounds great. This album should go down in history imo. Shit is fantastic.

5/5

-MW

Before listening to In Mourning, I had heard really good things about them. Comparisons to Insomnium, Opeth, and Katatonia made me set up some high expectations. Progressive Melodic Death Metal should be something right up my alley. Well, sadly, In Mourning’s Monolith doesn’t stand as tall as it wants to.

I can see where the comparisons lie: There’s definitely a proggy feel throughout the album’s eight tracks, but nothing too terribly adventurous. They contain the melodic subtleties of Insomnium and Opeth’s heavier and older tracks. The same feeling of melancholy is definitely present, as if the band’s name wasn’t a foreshadowing of things to come. This is an album I’d save for a rainy day.

The average song on Monolith is 6 minutes or so and features some melodic death metal vocals with big power chords and some chugging riffs. Every now and then, there’s a overtly melodic guitar line that takes the forefront of the music. As I said before, a lot of the melody is simple and subtle, so there’s not much in the way of hooks. This is often broken up with more softer and more melodic passages that may or may not contain clean vocals. In Mourning can turn their song into a living atmosphere, and do succeed at times.

Sometimes guitarist/vocalist Tobias Netzell’s  breaks up his deep Mikael Åkerfeldt sounding growls and screams, allowing some vocal tone bleeding through, as in “For You To Know” and “A Shade of Plague”. I point this out because that type of scream sounds very raw and emotional and just seems satisfying. It doesn’t seem to happen enough. His singing is a little lackluster, but that isn’t where most of the meat is in any given track of the album anyway.

If I had to pick the album’s highlights, it would be the opener “For You To Know”, which has a memorable chorus, and the 13 minute closer “The Final Solution (Entering The Black Lodge)“. The rest of the songs tend to run together a bit with the same sound to each and every song, which is something any self proclaimed progressive band should probably avoid.

Another thing that In Mourning has in common with the aforementioned bands, especially Opeth, is that they fall victim to being, well, kinda boring. At the end of the album, I found myself to be rather apathetic to anything, which could be a mixture of the melancholic sound and a certain level of boredom. There’s not much I could walk away with from Monolith, which is a shame because it’s not that the music is bad or anything. It just doesn’t stand out very much and it’s not entirely captivating.

However, if you can find that you care enough to give it another listen, it does get better on repeat. Maybe if I listen to it more, it’ll get even better, but I just can’t find the ability to care all that much. You need to be in the right mood for this listen.

In Mourning – Monolith gets…

2.5/5: Nothing Special

- JR

[Snowed in this morning. Bleh. Out of sheer boredom I decided to review an album that recently came out that I haven't heard and previously had no intention of hearing. Thanks to an advertisement, that album was HIM's Screamworks. A disclaimer: I've never actually heard a whole HIM album until this point, so just play it safe and assume I'm just making assumptions.]

I think someone told me once that HIM were a metal band, and I was foolish enough to believe them. That was a long time ago, of course. That was back when all the hype was built up from CKY, Jackass, and the Viva La Bam spinoff had Bam Margera hanging out with HIM frontman Ville Valo and throwing heartagrams all over the damn place. I finally heard their music and it didn’t leave any lasting impression on me in the slightest. World moves on and I don’t particularly care.

So today I found myself listening to HIM’s Screamworks: Love In Theory In Practice. To be honest, I set out with the expectations (and maybe the intention?) of absolutely hating this album. I was surprised be the results of the experiment and we can accept our null hypothesis. It doesn’t actually suck.

Read the rest of this entry

Every now and then I just kinda feel like things are getting stagnant. I wouldn’t say I was getting bored with the music scene, but sometimes I crave a new sound and I just want to be enthralled by something I haven’t heard before. Luckily, I came across Norway’s SHINING.

Not to be confused by the blackened emo Swedish band by the same name (he says as he alienates a portion of his audience), SHINING play a style of music that amalgamates jazz fusion, black metal, and industrial. Some of you may cringe at the thought, but this blend of genres makes for a truly engaging and challenging listen.  The music is weird, but sometimes weird is good; and with Blackjazz, weird is spectacular.

The music is abrasive in nature, although it wouldn’t take a genius to come to that conclusion by the album’s title alone. The first few tracks, “The Madness and Damage Done” and “Fisheye“, make heavy use of fuzzy distorted guitars and vocals with synth accompaniment; Shining wear the industrial influence on their sleeves. As with anything jazz related, expect odd time signatures and changes in meter. Don’t expect to be turned off if you think this will be too hard of a listen, however, as a lot of the synth lines and guitar riffs are catchy and memorable, serving as hooks. In “Fisheye“, we get our first taste of saxophone, played by vocalist/guitarist Jorgen Munkeby, who also played sax in Ihsahn’s After, which I praised as the first great album of 2010.

Read the rest of this entry

Oh wow, (mostly) instrumental music that keeps me thoroughly entertained!

An eclectic blend of Post-Rock, Jazz Fusion, and Metal, Tangled Thoughts of Leaving are, with the lack of a better word: AMAZING. With influences ranging from The Dillinger Escape Plan, Opeth, and Neurosis to Sigur Ros and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, you just kinda have to assume you’re getting into something highly experimental and different.

Through the course of their Tiny Fragments EP, you can hear lounge piano over frantic drumming and spastic guitar work that transforms into smoother sections. For a moment during the end  18-minute title track, we get sludge metal vocals over post-metal riffs and atmospheres. And that’s only the first track in this four track masterpiece.

Tiny Fragments Part Two acts as a perfect bridge between One and Three, with industrial noise creating an atmosphere that carries us from the metallic ending of One to the beautifully crafted epic post-rock glory that is Three. I cannot stress enough how amazing Part Three is. This structured soundscape is just unbelievable. It doesn’t have the pitfalls of being somewhat boring that plagues some post-rock. The closing track is the 10 minute Banshee. Through it’s course, you hear the same type of diverse elements heard through the three part title track. Astounding music.

Oh, and did I mention that their work is free? Shit yeah, it is. Listen to samples on their MySpace, and click below to download their Tiny Fragments EP. Their split EP with sleepmakeswaves can be downloaded through a link on their myspace as well. And that’s free too!

Tangled Thoughts of Leaving – Tiny Fragments gets

4.5/5

- JR

It’s a good feeling when something you’ve been working on for a long time comes to fruition. After months of hard slog for very little gain, you might finally feel as if it has all been worth it, and you can allow yourself a pat on the back and maybe a few drinks down the pub. For Malvern-based hardcore quartet AsZerosWeAreInfinite, or AZWAI as they are more colloquially known, that drink should be at least three fingers, and the hand should belong to a big sweaty gorilla.

You see, their self-titled EP was recorded over a year ago, but only now do you, the lucky public, get to sample the fruits of their labour.

The opener, ‘God, By Any Other Name‘, kicks in with the lyrics “between my broken teeth and self-prophesied lies, you will discover salvation for your ache”. This could be as much a comment from anybody who has found their way to the front of the stage during one of AZWAI’s shows as it is about the actual subject, one Wayne Bent. Bent, also known as Michael Travesser, is the charismatic leader of the Lord Our Righteousness Church in New Mexico, a religious community who were featured in the Channel 4 Documentary ‘The End of the World Cult‘.

It’s a belter of an opening track, driving home with the force of something big and forceful and un-clichéd as possible. You might be surprised that there is only one guitar at work here, as the entire band works hard to create a ferocious, full-bodied sound. Vocalist and lyricist Adam Murkin is great at taking a perspective and writing intelligently from it, no matter how bizarre or convoluted the perspective of that person might be. The clout with which he delivers his lines is unrelenting across the board, too, and conveys in part his mighty stage presence (both in front of and mid-crowd).

Next up is ‘Snakeskin in the Shape of Wedding Band, which claims the crown for the longest track on the EP – marginally. And that’s one of the great things about AZWAI’s refined style. The tracks are long enough to have enough substance to hold your attention (I’m looking at you, Ampere), but aren’t so long that the onslaught becomes wearing. I know that this will be a firm crowd favourite – enough breakdowns and catchy lines for them to really get into.

Closer ‘Poor Syntax’ stands out as my favourite. I am still in awe as to how drummer Dan Taylor can manage as many stick-clacks in the space of a single second as he does to bring in this track, but this is by no means the highlight of the track. The influence of The Dillinger Escape Plan is clear from the outset, but it’s no mere consummate rip-off: the guys know how to build on their influences, rather than rehashing existing songs.

The EP may only clock in at seven minutes and thirty-one seconds, but it’s more than enough. It is an unrelenting juggernaut, devoid of unnecessary trimmings or lyrical waffle. Hear me; salvation is coming – and it’s name is AZWAI.

1. God, by Any Other Name
2. Snakeskin in the Shape of a Wedding Band
3. Poor Syntax

Myspace // Get It

- CG

Seriously, why have Stella Dawes not been signed yet? A clutch of glowing reviews like theirs, and you might have expected someone major to have taken notice by now.

I first received my copy of ‘Contrasts‘, their debut full-length, in the summer of 2008. Boy was I excited. I’d been keenly following this band for a while, ever since vocalist Mike Shakespeare, ferreting his way around Myspace one day, politely messaged a bunch of like-minded people in my area asking us to check out his band. Words such as ‘Mare‘, and ‘Eden Maine‘ were bandied around, and I’ve been in love ever since.

I had known the album had been in production for a while. Mike and guitarist James Barter were taking on the entire process themselves, fitting it around day jobs, so a delay was to be expected. But when it came, I was stunned. Two tracks, ‘Dichotomy‘ and ‘Everything Happens to Eeyore‘ had been favourites for a while, and the recently previewed ‘Happy Ever Afternoon‘ and ‘The Unspeakable‘ had satiated my desire for new material, but even these didn’t prepare me for the majesty of the beast.

You see, with a lot of albums, and ones of this genre in particular, the songs – the lyrics and the heartfelt meaning behind them – can come out quite same-y. Not entirely, obviously, but I quite often find myself having to check the name of the track against the listing to get a bearing of where I am in the record. This is never the case with Stella Dawes. Every song has a unique hallmark, not least in thanks to Bart’s unique guitar sound – something akin to the love-child of a chainsaw and a cheese grater. You know it’s ‘Gut‘ because of the throaty staccato opening. You can differentiate between the two ‘Investment Intercourse‘ tracks (Deposit and Return respectively) because the former kicks you squarely in the groin at 1:31. You know you’re listening to what is arguably the album’s centrepiece ‘When the Tiger Lost His Voice‘ because, well, who else sings about tigers except Survivor? No riff or chord progression is repeated between songs, and they could have, because they’re all good.

For me though, it’s the very lyrics I mentioned earlier that make this record for me. Furious wrath and hardcore go hand-in-hand, and that’s all well and good, but I like my lyrical spice to take a more intelligent twist than your average ‘argh, I’m so misunderstood!’. Mike knows what he doesn’t like about the world, but he expresses it intelligently and, above all, poetically. Lines like ‘we polish shit, but like it or not, nobody here is perfection’ ring true, as well as being delivered with consistent gusto and conviction.

Just a little note on the packaging. If ever there was a reason to buy a physical copy, this is it. The brown cardboard case is beautifully DIY (in keeping with the ethos of the whole package), and charming to boot. The insert, chock full of handwritten lyrics, continues the theme, and a nice little bonus was the typed insert thanking me for buying the CD. It’s these little touches that might draw the ever-increasing number of pirates away from torrent sites and towards their wallets, were the majority of albums not merely templated jewel-case jobs. Anything to help in the war.

I know the band is not currently gigging due to the departure of founding bassist and drummer, Steve Butcher and Simon Kendrick, but I wish them the best of luck finding suitable replacements to fill the void. Based on a heavy amount of speculation (and the appearance of a couple of demos on their Myspace page recently), I suspect that the rest of the band will use this time to gather their creative thoughts, and I hope they will hit us with a stunning sophomore release sometime soon.

1. Mouth
2. Happy Ever Afternoon
3. Dichotomy
4. Investment Intercourse: A Deposit
5. Everything Happens to Eeyore
6. Gut
7. Investment Intercourse: A Return
8. Sleep is For the Week
9. Fifteen Hour Drive
10. When the Tiger Lost His Voice
11. The Unspeakable
12. Decay

Myspace // Support

[The boys are very reasonably offering you to 'set your own price' on what you think is fair for the music. You can choose to pay either £3 ($4.84), £5 ($8.07) or £7 ($11.30) + shipping. Check out the link above to hear what you're letting yourself in for. It's hardly expensive, and the packaging alone is worth it.]

- CG

It’s always weird when the driving force behind an influential metal band branches off and does his own solo thing on the side. A lot of the core fan base expects more of the same, but as it’s been shown time and time again, we end up with something different. Devin Townsend is a prime example. How did we get from the Industrial Progressive Death Metal pummeling of Strapping Young Lad to the pop metal in Devin Townsend Project’s Addicted? Likewise, what is the point of doing a solo project if it sounds exactly like the band you fronted for years?

After, the third solo album of Emperor mastermind Ihsahn, doesn’t take a huge leap in genre and style like the aforementioned Devin Townsend, but if there’s anyone out there expecting a black metal album then they’re bound to be disappointed. Ihsahn does indeed take a leap, but it’s a well thought out and confident one. If I didn’t know any better and you told me that a black metal God wrote this album, I would be hesitant to believe you.

Okay, so After does contain the black metal influence. But if you’ve been playing in a certain genre for 20 years, you can’t expect the influence to just drop off completely. There’s bursts of blackened riffing and blasts beats here and there, but there’s so much more going on in After. Putting it fairly broadly, After is a progressive metal album. From the get go, this fact is evident in the opening guitar melody in “The Barren Lands“. Tasteful hyper-melodic progressive guitar wank that reminds me of Scale The Summit can be found here and there.

There’s also an Opeth sound to some of the record with use of acoustic guitars and a clean vocal style (as heard in the track “Austere”). Ihsahn also makes good use of saxophone throughout the album, giving some sections a crazy avant-garde feel. The jazzy sax section in “A Grave Inversed” sounds like a blackened Mr. Bungle record. Holy shit, was it amazing. For a majority of the album, Ihsahn’s vocals are harsh and throaty screams. But the spotlight seems to shine on his beautifully raspy, yet serene singing that somehow manages to send a shiver down my spine.

After has me spellbound. In my opinion, this is the first truly amazing record of 2010, unless I’m missing out on something. And if I am, please let me know. But for me, this is the first sign that 2010 will be an amazing year for metal.

1. The Barren Lands
2. A Grave Inversed
3. After
4. Frozen Lakes on Mars
5. Undercurrent
6. Austere
7. Heavens Black Sea
8. On the Shores

Ihsan MySpace

Candlelight Records

- JR

“This goes out to the guy who yelled to turn the bass down. What kinda fuckin’ show do you think this is?”

So that was Glassjaw. Six years, £18 [roughly $30 for us American folk - Ed.] and three hours travel, and finally, FINALLY, I get to see them.

Glassjaw have had a hard time of playing in the UK. Their first tour over here, back in October 2002, was postponed due to Daryl Palumbo’s ill health. The rescheduled shows that December were also canceled, and then four shows into the tour the following April, Palumbo relapsed once again. That’s a lot of disappointed fans.

Basically, you take any opportunity you can get to see Glassjaw over here, and so when they announced a run of headline shows ahead of their support slot for Brand New at Wembley, I literally jumped at the chance.

A lot of the songs you could probably predict (stand-outs included John Lennon, Ape Dos Mil, Two Tabs of Mescaline, and Pretty Lush), but there was a healthy slice of juicy exclusivity. I nearly screamed like a girl when the drummer started playing the intro from El Mark, which Daryl informed us was the first time they had ever played it live, ten mighty years since it was written. They also played a brand new song entitled ‘All Good Junkies Go To Heaven’, which was met with a very healthy response.

I came away sore, soaked and smiling. So was it worth it after all this time? Well, yes, of course, but my one small gripe was the lack of support act. The rest of the UK got Pulled Apart by Horses and one of my favourite up-and-comers, Shapes, so why no love for Portsmouth?

But fuck it; it was a hiccup in paradise. Euphoria’s endearing, so I’ll let them off.

Thinly-veiled Glassjaw lyric-references over. Promise.

4/5 | B

- CG

Spawning from Auburn, Californa Dismal Lapse are a technical death metal band who have just put out their first full length titled Eon Fragmentation. For the most part, it’s pretty straight forward technical death metal. If I had to describe their sound from other bands they’d be between Necrophagist and Severed Savior. There are some rare appearances by jazz influenced and clean sections here and there, but overall it’s just killer technical death metal to remember. The riffs don’t get lost in over-technicality and it’s quite head bangable if you catch my drift. Since this is a debut by a not so well known band, I figure some details are in order. The band is a three piece with Chris Banrum on drums/vocals, Jason Brehm on bass, and Evan Gravatt on guitar. A big sound for a three piece band. The guitar grinds, and the bass is fragile, smooth, yet still heavy. Chris Banrum blasts away keeping the album steady while delivering an excellent vocal performance. This album is just really solid material, and I’d listen to it any day before some shitty ass “prog” that’s really just wank in disguise.

3.5/5

http://www.myspace.com/dismallapse

-MW

If you aren’t familiar with the band Aborted for some stupid reason, they were a generic death metal/goregrind band that put out some pretty good material in their early career (the albums Purity of Perversion and Engineering their dead mostly).  Their later work is just pseudo core metal on the edge of deathcore. Also known as, it’s terrible. I heard rumors their new EP Coronary Reconstruction was actually good. False as Mastodon’s Crack the Skye.

I’ve been waiting for Aborted to hopefully make a turn back to their old roots, and I was promised that with this.  It’s not even close, but I can see some hope in there still. It’s the same thing over and over, no memorable songs or riffs at all. The production is pretty damn crap too. This isn’t much of an in depth review, because this album doesn’t have enough depth to it to drown someone.  Eugh.

One decent band turned shitty, out of five.

-MW

The deathcore scene seems to be evolving into something more more progressive. Some call it Sumeriancore, named after the label who signs these progressive metalcore/deathcore artists such as The Faceless, Born of Osiris, and Veil of Maya, among others. I’m taking a liking to the term Progcore, myself. Whatever you want to call it, its presence is growing. Young, talented musicians are trying something different and it’s sounding good.

Speak of the Devil are one of these bands. On the musical spectrum, it would seem that their closest relatives seem to be Born of Osiris and Between the Buried and Me. Speak Of The Devil have this hard/soft duality that this type of progressive music has. The heavy sections feature powerful aggressive screaming and crushing riffs that are cut up with synth melodies and guitar lines. When SOTD thinks the listener has had enough, they take a step back for a second to treat us with some spacey atmosphere and clean singing, found in tracks “Monkey See, Monkey Doomsday” and “Formaldehyde and Seek.” There’s also the very slight tendency to go into a proggy and experimental game of wank every now and then, but nothing as far out there as BTBAM. With Speak of the Devil, there’s a considerable amount of progressive flux, but they don’t stray too far from the course.

The band has a penchant for naming their songs with clever puns and portmanteaux, a la Norma Jean. To me, this is pretty cheesy and gives off the impression that they don’t take themselves too seriously, which is kind of bittersweet. And upon further inspection, one of the members has the role of “lighting/lifecoach.” My first thought I found this pretty confusing, but I saw this high quality video of pro-shot footage.

Eh, I’ll just give it to him. The light show is pretty impressive. But I’ll just assume that by “lifecoach,” they mean “the guy who supplies the weed.”

All joking aside, the music is damn good. The heavy parts are satisfying, the proggy parts are enthralling, and the clean parts are kinda soothing. I highly recommend giving SOTD a listen if you’re a fan of any of the bands I name dropped above. And how can you afford not to? The music is free.

Speak of the Devil – Speak of The Devil

1. My Name Is Fire

2. Formaldehyde & Seek

3. Napalm Reader

4. Monkey See, Monkey Doomsday

Click here to download

Enjoy the free music. If you like it, make sure to add Speak of the Devil on myspace.

HBIH gives Speak of the Devil:

4/5 | B

- JR

Okay, so I went to the tour Monday and after standing in line for too long I got in slightly late for Scale the Summit’s set. I believe I missed one or two songs. Anyway, they did great but whatever we have more important bands to talk about. Since I knew Devy and Cynic were coming up I pushed my way to the front. Devin’s set started up with probably 20 minutes of sound problems because of the tool on the house soundboard. To pass the time Devin got on the microphone and made conversation with the audience. By conversation, I mean making a total fool of himself in front of a crowd of people. Hilariously, I might add. The set opened with Disruptr from Ki and ended with By Your Command from ZTO. The whole set list was awesome, except for the lack of Hyperdrive. Despite Devin claiming complete awkwardness on stage he was VERY intense, especially for By Your Command. The whole band was pretty precise as far as I noticed. The same goes for Cynic, I didn’t notice a missed note and their presence was really enthralling. Very dense atmosphere and inbetween certain songs they played samples that were a cross between a self help seminar and a philosophy class. To be at a concert for both DT and Cynic is pretty crazy, considering their legendary status and how much I love them both. Between the Buried and Me were pretty disappointing, a completely average performance. Just a lot of standing and “Lets play this absolutely correct, fuck entertainment.” but also being preceded by two bands with much more widely appreciated live performances was silly anyway, but the scene kids won’t even notice so whatever.

A 5/5 concert since DTP and Cynic picked up the slack, a lot.

-MW

ps, watch out for me rockin’ my Cynic hoody and DTP Addicted shirt.