Metal Reviews

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crap of the month.
fuck this band and their pseudo tough guy appeal.

This is what metalcore should never be like.

Let me edit that for you:



Don't know if you appreciate Metalcore or not, but I find it a rather bad genre as a whole. Other than a VERY few good bands (Between the Buried and Me, and... Well, Between the Buried and Me), I see no reason for the scene to exist other than to make the mallcore twats happy. Most of them have moved onto Deathcore now, which makes the genre even more obsolete... blah.

And I can't BELIEVE this band shares a label with BtBaM. Victory records is pure, concentrated shit. I saw this in the stores when it came out and they slapped on a big ol' fucking sticker that read "THE MOST BRUTAL ALBUM OF THE YEAR!!!!". *vomits* Just stop it RIGHT now, Victory.

That's my rage for the day. Thank you.

Eh, a lot of it is shite but it seems to have gotten heavier overall and there are some gems here and there. Got the debut from a band called Viatrophy to review and they're trying to do something with it.

Not heard these guys, assume they're as crap as stated.

Victory does have a penchant for putting out crap, let's not forget my personal un-favorite Bury Your Dead. What a shit band.

That said, metalcore can be good if done right (All that Remains, God Forbid, Unearth, etc).

Unearth is actually pretty decent, though I only really like one of their albums. (III)
Ehh.... I also forgot Dead to Fall. Another suprisingly good metalcore band from... well whadaya know, Victory!! Haven't heard much of their latest though...

If you want to know if you like this kind of music, you absolutely cannot listen to this album to make a decision. You need to listen to "The Dead Walk" by The Acacia Strain. They are the founders of this slow heavy subgenre of what most will call metalcore. Emmure actually copied quite a bit from The Acacia Strain on this CD and then wrapped it in terrible cliched new packaging....so much so as there has been a well documented fued between the two bands. At one point, the guitarist from The Acacia Strain spit in the Emmure guitarist face and said "stop stealing our riffs" and the Emmure guitarist did nothing, effectively admitting to the infraction. Regardless, if you are old school metal fan that despises the last 5-8 years of "metalcore", you really don't stand much of a chance of liking this stuff. Like I said, give the Acacia Strain a try, they are one of the heaviest bands out there IMO and they are original....but please don't listen to Emmure first and write everything off. Thats like trying chicken wing flavored ice cream before trying vanilla or chocolate and saying "ice cream sucks".

The Acacia Strain invented Deathcore?

Pussy.

nah man they are just really heavy hardcore.

Yea, The Acacia Strain did not invent deathcore at all... they don't play deathcore. You never hear death metal drums at all and their music is generally slow and not fast like death... some riffs are influenced by death but I don't group them in that category just on that. All I'm saying is they have their own sound, a sound that a lot of bands today (Emmure is the most popular) are emulating. What gets under my skin is when some of the copycats are getting bashed or praised for their "style" of music. I can't tell anyone what music is good and what isn't bc it is all subjective, but what I can and will do is tell you to at least go to the source before you judge, and the source in this case is The Acacia Strain. I think they are a great band and deserve respect, which is why writing this is worth my time.

A number of copycat bands have cropped up to bite the chugging, riff-heavy, low-tuned, dissonant sound that The Acacia Strain have created. You can see this in other outfits like Oceano and Whitechapel who do similar things with their sound, but the thing you don't see from them is the ridiculous showmanship and disrespect for the original sound that Emmure displays. It's not metalcore, that's for sure. It's hardly deathcore. This also begs the question as to the importance of categorizing a particular sound. If it defies categorization, how is it rational to paint an entire, possibly unrelated, genre with that label? If you call it metalcore, you could say "metalcore is crap" in which case you're arguing bands like Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying (two of the original "metalcore" groups) are garbage because of Emmure. If you call it deathcore you're throwing away bands like Winds of Plague, The Black Dahlia Murder, and Despised Icon because Emmure offends the ears.

The truth is that Emmure aren't the worst musicians out there, it's that their attitude and embarrassing effort to create their own image (Emmure boxing gloves as merch?) and their unexplained amount of greater-market appeal put them in a position where they should be respectful to the source and yet they chose to act as though they'd invented something which they blatantly stole (compare this album to Acacia Strain's earlier effort 3750 and see if you can pick up some questionably similar riffs).

Maybe it's not that we dislike entire genres of music, but that it's easier to cut out the cancer of Emmure by shooting the cancer victim. It requires more due diligence to seek out the better, more accurate portrayal of this type of sound. I encourage you to do so.

I wholeheartedly agree. I will have to check out this Acacia Strain I've heard about.

The Acacia Strain is pure liquid shit.

Do I smell some delicious copypasta?

pure heavy liquid shit

They're still shit.

but they are heavy shit.