Sacred Mother Tongue

The Ruin Of Man

Written by: TL on 04/06/2009 22:26:41

Sigh, just when I thought I was getting somewhere with my pile of overdue releases, one pops up that I had forgotten all about. That one would be "The Ruin Of Man", the debut from British metallers Sacred Mother Tongue, and it's been hiding underneath a pile of covers for too long, so now that I found it I decided to power listen to it for a couple of days and then bring you this review.

So like I said, Sacred Mother Tongue are British and they play metal, or metalcore to be more exact. Metalcore of a relatively straightforward and accessible nature and all the regular bells and whistles apply. Pretty cool guitar riffs? Check. Semi-brutal breaks? Check. Horror chords? Check. Screamed verses? Check. Catchy clean choruses? Check, check and double check. The best parts of this particular version of the formula are easy to pick out. The solid riffage and the catchy choruses. Even if you don't like the music from the beginning (like me) it takes but one listen to "Two Thousand Eight Hundred" for instance, to recognize that it is actually a pretty good song.

The problems however, are just as easy to spot. First off there's the all too obviously questionable level of originality, but let's not dwell too much on that. There's also the problem that by softening up the metal with the 'core' and the clean choruses, some of the punch that makes up for a metal band's credibility has been audibly subtracted - "The Ruin Of Man" simply doesn't have that "Oomph" feeling that an album of heavy music should. Worst though is the all too ordinary 'young band's vocalist' problem. Yet again I find myself writing "the screams here are mediocre at best" and these particular ones are of such a high pitch that I actually think they add to the detriment of said inexplicable "Oomph" factor. The clean ones aren't too impressive either, and personally I find that in some places they sound like the singer of (emo band) Anberlin, except here he's trying to sound metal without doing a very convincing job.

So what's going to happen to "The Ruin Of Man"? Well to the true metallers I definitely think this is going to be too light weight, so most of those will pass. To the hardcore scenesters, the retarded level of technicality and the cheeky pretense isn't present, so they're probably going to ditch it too. Words like "Kill the messiah" aren't going to go down well with the Christians either and the screams will probably scare away those guys and their girlfriends as well. In all seriousness though, to the vast sea of music fans who only scrape the surface of the metal world and gain enough heaviness from bands like Killswitch Engage, Slipknot and Bullet For My Valentine, this could sell and entertain quite well. I mean it isn't a bad record, but it's not a good one compared to those of some of said bands either. So all in all I figure I'll give Sacred Mother Tongue some time to grow and some room to improve:

6

Download: Two Thousand Eight Hundred,
For The Fans Of: Killswitch Engage, Bullet For My Valentine
Listen: myspace.com/sacredmothertongue

Release Date 13.04.2009
Transcend Records

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