A lot has changed over the course of six albums for Buffalo, New York’s Every Time I Die. Having begun their career nearly sixteen years ago with an incredibly raucous and off-kilter approach to hardcore, the band developed/refined a love of massive and swung southern rock riffs and huge choruses, resulting in the band we know and love today. From Parts Unknown, despite it’s name, has a very distinct reference point — here, we find the band revisiting that early, raw aggression through the wiser eyes they own today.
Whether it was working with none other than Kurt Ballou of Converge fame or a whole series of outside factors, it’s obvious from the very opening of the ‘The Great Secret‘ that the somewhere along the line, the band rediscovered the joy of playing manic and obnoxiously heavy music . It’s not that it ever left them, instead it was used more sparingly, but From Parts Unknown is packed full of those two minute long, raging riff-machines that used to be sprinkled throughout their work — tracks such as ‘If There Is Room To Move, Things Move‘, ‘Pelican Of The Desert‘ and ‘Thirst‘ will all eventually take their place alongside ‘One Quarter Of A Revolution‘ and ‘Typical Miracle‘ as live set main-stays, designed precisely to move bodies at ridiculous speeds.
Alongside that however, sit oddities such as ‘Moor‘, a track driven by a single-note and bleak piano piano riff before unravelling itself as a mid-tempo stomp that is more reminiscent of the band and finally ending up back where it started — ‘Moor‘ doesn’t feel forced or unnecessarily out-of-place, instead making for an interesting detour that breaks up the visceral fury either side of it. on the other hand, ‘Old Light‘ acts as another bridge to different region of their sound, to the melodic and huge choruses of ‘The New Black‘ and ‘Wanderlust‘.
The third and final component that makes up From Parts Unknown is the rowdy, southern-fried metalcore that has come to comprise the vast majority of their back catalogue. For instance, ‘El Dorado‘ acts as the perfect topper to the album and ‘Decayin’ With The Boys‘ is easily amongst the best tracks the group have ever written, with a hugely infectious chorus and a whole collection of unrelenting and swaggering riffs.
From Parts Unknown is not an album that will ever sway the naysayers who were never one for their sound, but for those who lost their way throughout the years, Every Time I Die’s new found sense of unbridled anger is more than enough to rekindle the fire sparked by the first time you heard Gutter Phenomenon or maybe even Hot Damn!
Every Time I Die’s From Parts Unknown gets…
4.5/5
– DL