With Chaos In Her Wake

Treason

Written by: PP on 25/01/2010 21:15:57

For the past week or two I've been trying to find redeeming aspects from With Chaos In Her Wake's debut album "Treason". Unsuccessfully, I might add, because this Yorkshire, UK bunch are part of the cancer that gives deathcore the negative connotation that the otherwise awesome genre suffers from. They don't "give a shit for old clichés of the scene and thrash out their extreme mixture without following any rules" according to the info sheet, but that's one big fat lie, as "Treason" offers nothing that hasn't been done to death in the genre already.

Yes, the band has more of a death metal / old school base to their sound than their core-colleagues, but I'm not convinced that it's not just the side-effect of the sub-par production which leaves the instruments in the mix unclear and largely drowned underneath the growls. A quick look at "Genocide: Oppressive Violence" confirms my preconceptions, as it starts with a completely pointless and unnecessary chug....chugga-chugga-chug (repeat) breakdown. Afterwards, some low-end tremolo riffs are fired in the classic death metal serpentine manner for a while, before the music returns to repetitive, uninspiring riffing. Sometimes, it's possible to rescue a corpse like that with some mind-blowing vocal work, but whenever their vocalist delivers his hollow growl lacking of any substance on top, the only vibe I'm getting is that of supreme annoyance. "From The Skies", track three, is the first time we hear some clean melody supplementing the two chords the band are otherwise using for the entirety of the album (exaggeration furthers my point) in the form of a solo passage, however, one like the rest of the album, sounds uninspired, tired, and forced. Trigger The Bloodshed, who sound a lot like these guys, at least have those technical leads and sublime drumming to make their album sound at least remotely likable, whereas With Chaos In Her Wake have massive problems delivering anything at all that's interesting instrumentally.

Now I could go on and describe the rest of the album, but there's really no point because it's one monotonous mess of underproduced, underplayed, and frankly, boring deathcore checking every mark of the don'ts in the deathcore rulebook. It speaks volumes when I didn't even notice that the band I was listening to had changed to The Argent Dawn, another band battling with precisely the same problem as these guys, without noticing before track three on their album. Like one frustrated fan put it on a Last.fm comment: "come oooon, so incredibly boring. create something unique pleeeeeease."

3

Download: Genocide: Oppressive Violence
For the fans of: Trigger The Bloodshed, The Argent Dawn
Listen: Myspace

Release date 15.02.2010
Rising Records

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