Figured I'd take a chance on this for a buck. The band name and cover art had me thinking some sort of stoner, doom, or hard rock, but the cursive script in the layout and the floral pattern on the back of the booklet made me think hardcore/metalcore. No band pic to aid me, either.
The first track is very thick, rumbly sludge metal. I wasn't a huge fan of the ultra-forced guttural vocals, but they fit the music well enough. A sludge album wouldn't have been my first choice, but if the rest of the disc had been in the same vein as the opener, I would have been ok with it.
Unfortunately, rather than sticking consistently with straightforward sludge, there's a tendency to explore their stoner and groove metal influences with bouncy, chuggy riffs. Admittedly, some of the stoner metal elements are not unwelcome and give the album some variety, but coupled with the vocals, the groove metal parts just feel like generic aggro chugging. They also use secondary clean vocals in several places which come off as weak Southern metal vox, and I'm even less of a fan of these than the forced gutturals.
Also, just as a warning to anyone interested in checking out the band, I've seen an online review and some online shop descriptions paint this as some sort of stoner metal/death metal hybrid. I assume this is coming from the "growled vocals = death metal crowd." Aside from the most superficial of similarities like extreme vocals (I neglected to mention they use a third type of BM-style backing vox in a few places) and downtuning, the more swarming guitar parts in "Dead Heart" are the only thing on this entire CD that could possibly be considered a tangible influence from death metal.
For just a dollar, not a big deal. Seriously doubt I'm ever going to relisten to it, though.
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