Hailing from Montreal, Camilla Rhodes are a precisely the type of Metalcore that I would expect to come out of Quebec – Raw and brutal. Like the Word Love from the Lips of a Harlot is the band’s first effort to date, and although it may be a fairly strong one, I believe there is still room for improvement.

To draw a comparison, Camilla Rhodes’s music can be described as something in between Lamb of God and The Black Dahlia Murder – Not as tight as LoG, yet more plodding and hard-hitting than TBDM. When I firstly popped this disc into my stereo I have to admit it didn’t strike me as a good release since it doesn’t follow the clean-cut/tight-riff Metalcore that seems to be growing within the genre. After a few months of listening to bands such as Shadows Fall, Unearth and Heaven Shall Burn an album like Camilla Rhodes’s was a little hard to digest.

After a couple of spins, I finally understood the sound the band was going for and found myself reminiscing about my high school days when I had newly discovered hardcore music. I’m almost certain that the group are avid fans of (what I now consider) “oldschool” and raw hardcore such as One King Down, (old) Snapcase, and Earth Crisis because their sound is very similar but only more extreme. Picture what Earth Crisis and One King Down would sound like if they added the extreme sound of Death Metal plus today’s recording methods and you'll get a good idea of Camilla Rhodes sounds like.

This release will likely appeal to those who enjoy the sound of mid-nineties hardcore, but not to those who are avid fans of the contemporary Metalcore scene. The songs are fairly repetitive and though the extreme moments are fairly abundant, the song structure is somewhat rough around the edges. There is not enough deviation from track to track that will allow the listener to differentiate the tracks easily either, but if I were to name a track as my favorite on the album it would have to be Women and Children First. With it’s long intro, ultra-aggressive vocals, and plodding tempo that later turns furious, its hard not to acknowledge that this song would not kill if it were performed live.

If I were to offer one word of advice, it would be to save time checking out this album if you don’t not enjoy raw and aggressive hardcore music, but if you do, by all means check these guys out. Their first release me be a little rough around the edges but I think that there’s plenty of time and potential for this Montreal-based band to improve.