Everything Was Sound is a smart and exciting follow-up to this LA metalcore quintet’s last full-length, The Night God Slept. Inherit The Earth sees it off to a powerful start with tortured spoken word and a slow build into crushing riffs.
Psychescape and Understanding Love As Loss are as hellishly heavy as they are emotional and, like some of their older material, pleasingly reminiscent of Deftones in their ability to mix fierce modern metal, atmospheric instrumental layers, rich snarling roars, and clean euphoric vocals.
Some tracks dial up the jarring mathcore fretwork, others pull in some subtle electronic influences, but Panic Room, with its tumultuous waves of calm and chaos and long spells of raw, passionate rants, is the album’s shining star. Unclean vocalist Garrett Russell, who has a Master’s in clinical psychology and suffers from bipolar disorder himself, continues to carefully deliver his lyrics too, with each track here telling the story of a distinct mental illness. This is spoken word core at its best.
