Aggression can take many—many—forms under the metal heading. With that, it’s such an easy move to just stack the extremes up against each other and call it a day, but simply throwing the fastest blasts next to the lowest and slowest breakdowns is rudimentary at this point. Embracing the Dying Sun, the new album from Pennsylvania slayers Scorched Mind, is the antithesis of this. Here,there is an embrace of seemingly straight-forward elements, by including ample nuance, so many equally disgusting characteristics of “aggression” and not letting them get muddled and diluted or misplaced, that provides a subtle cross pollination of genres and makes for a much more exciting listen than other acts who are simply rehashing age-old ideas.
Listening through Embracing the Dying Sun is akin to attending the mixed bill of the year and hearing all of your favourite elements: the hardcore band, the grind band, the deathcore band, and that somewhat out of place death metal band. The first four seconds of the album set the entire tone the CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! of the snare establishing a concise thesis of angsty, pissed-off, violence. However, the curveball of omitting that last snare hit leaves you on the edge of your seat. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these three tactful snare cracks write a novel.
It's hard to argue against the influence and similarities to contemporary hardcore/metalcore acts like End or The Acacia Strain, and I might go so far as to say some of Pains hardest hitting moments as well. “Antidote” is the poster child of this throttling energy, rife with blast-beats, the quintessential grinding HM2 guitar tone, feedback palette cleanser, and a filthy tempo drop. “Reflective Void” pulls straight from the Gojira and Conjurer playbook, dedicating the next 2:30 largely to one of the crushing-est moments on the record. The riff comes straight from “Flying Whales” and “Hadal” (respectively) and damn it, those are two of the heaviest riffs of all time—HOAT status if you will.
“Fear of Existence” is the standout track on the album, so clearly exemplifying tasteful simplicity while retaining grime, grit and providing a shit-eating grin. The section between 0:23 and 0:46 bounces along with drums morphing from more syncopated tension to a straight 4/4 “rock” beat. There’s no real way to explain it, but it just sounds like “nanana boo boo.” “Harsh Reality” also deserves a specific mention with its nod to late-era Stray From the Path and, again, Gojira, by throwing in a paradiddle divided across the snare and ride bell. The moment stands out from some of the more “in the pocket” hardcore elements of the album and shows the group can play to serve a more creative body of work.
There is a palpable direction and vision executed on Embracing the Dying Sun, despite this being the band’s first full length album (and second overall release) in less than two years. The production itself is shepherded into the modern era by Matt Guglielmo who has worked with Sleepsculptor, Cryptodira, Float Omen, Fit for an Autopsy, Spite, End and literally too many other sick bands to mention. His tact helps melds the collective sound of the history of hardcore, metalcore, grind, and death metal into a cohesive and contemporary must-listen.