Born From Pain

Survival

Written by: PP on 12/11/2008 13:58:51

My biggest problems with the "War", the previous release from the Dutch hardcore-metallers Born From Pain, were the almost complete lack of distinguishable riffing and the immensely difficult to become friends with growl of vocalist Snelting. He employed an extremely coarse, often indecipherable style that honestly brought nothing but annoyance into their already generic form of tough-guy moshcore lying somewhere between metalcore and hardcore, and was more or less the reason why that release never took off. For "Survival", their new album, the vocalist's been shoved off to my delight and replaced with their former bassist Franssen, and ta-da, the band immediately sounds much better than they did before.

Franssen's chosen style is more of a hardcore yell a la Comeback Kid and Bane than something out of a metal nightmare. Born From Pain also have a new drummer, and his simplistic pound-'em-hard style fits the newly found sound of the band much better. The guys on the other instruments have swayed away from clogged chugga-chugga-absolute mess-like combination of metalcore and hardcore, and now focus exclusively on writing straightforward hardcore with strongly audible influence by bands from the other side of the pond. As a result, the band is now much easier to be friends with, and there are a number of songs where I actually found myself nodding along to their heavy chord-based hardcore model. See "Sons Of A Dying World" for a great example of a Comeback Kid influenced song and "State Of Mind" for a textbook example of how to write simple hardcore where focus is on the yelling and moshable lowly tuned riffing.

Occasionally, the band does venture back towards a metallic sound, as audible in the lead guitar work of "The Wolves Are Loose" or the thrashy "Endgame". Though this brings variation to the album, it's still clear that the band sounds most at home when they're playing Full Blown Chaos-style bone-eschewing hardcore that doesn't extend a centimetre across the pre-defined genre description. While this still doesn't make Born From Pain anything special, it's way better than anything else they've released in the past.

Download: Never Die, State Of Mind, Sons Of A Dying World
For the fans of: Comeback Kid, Bane, Full Blown Chaos
Listen: Myspace

Release date 03.11.2008
Metal Blade

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