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Whitechapel – The Brotherhood Of The Blade

Whitechapel has been among the best, if not the best, deathcore bands since the style was developed in the early years of the new millennium. However, they have always been

8 years ago

Whitechapel has been among the best, if not the best, deathcore bands since the style was developed in the early years of the new millennium. However, they have always been missing one thing, and that was to release a live album. Five studio albums, dozens of tours, and hundreds of shows later, everyone finally got what they asked for. On their tour where they co-headlined with Devildriver, the band decided to use their hometown show as the location for their live DVD/CD, The Brotherhood Of The Blade. The result is a live album that perfectly captures their sound, containing as much brute force as humanely possible onto one CD.

Live albums are very wishy-washy. There’s been some absolutely fantastic ones and also some very bad ones. There’s a few factors that affect this: the level of production, the performance of the band, and the overall experience. Whitechapel hit every nail on the head here, and clearly show why they’re arguably the most dominant band in deathcore right now, and why you should see them on every tour they play on. From the intro to the closing seconds on the final track, you can tell that the band were running on all cylinders, with a fire under their ass that made them play this show like it was the last one they’d ever have the chance to play.

The setlist was fairly balanced as well. While the band did spend a good amount of the live set on their new album, they made sure to throw in some fan favorites, including two tracks from their debut The Somatic Defilement. The bonus track “This Is Exile” is just the icing on the cake, and gives fans one of the best performances of the track the band has ever done. It is a shame they only chose one song from A New Era Of Corruption, however, because that album has some of their best songs on it. It’s nothing to fault the band for however, because they have every right to play mostly their new album on the tour that supports it. It would be foolish for the band to do otherwise.

This live album is definitely worth your time. From front to back, it’s a quality release, and they really captured their sound well. Deathcore, and heavy metal in particular, is hard to capture on CD because the mix has to perfectly catch all the little elements that make the songs really punch you in the gut, and they succeeded in spades with this release. Hopefully in a few years we’ll be treated to another live album from the band, because this one was an absolute treat, and is definitely worth spending 15 bucks on.

Whitechapel – The Brotherhood Of The Blade gets…

4/5

-SS

Heavy Blog

Published 8 years ago