Illuminate Me

I Have Become A Corpse

Written by: PP on 29/11/2014 15:36:23

Hailing from Tampa, Florida we have an interesting southern fried mathcore band called Illuminate Me, whose debut album "I Have Become A Corpse" came out this summer. It's becoming increasingly rare to hear metalcore-rooted bands take the mathcore approach these days and do it successfully, probably because Norma Jean, Every Time i Die, and The Chariot did everything that needs to be done in that genre in the last 10 years or so, all of them owing direct influence to mathcore pioneers in Botch, of course. Yet this is what Illuminate Me attempt to do nonetheless in a 30 minute stretch to varying degrees of success.

For starters, the band's vocalist owns a very similar harsh, razor-sharp scream/growl as Cory Brandan (of Norma Jean) fame, and the band's stop/start approach to writing riffs also owes all of its inspiration to said bands. Full of discordant dissonance, the band tears through aggressive, in-your-face type hardcore/mathcore tracks where it feels like instruments are smashed against amps, walls and the drum kit, producing a noisy, chaotic and unpredictable soundscape that is at its best on "No Sunshine In The Sunshine State". Sadly, the band's take on mathcore is a bit of a hit or miss, because the screamer offers little to no variety to his approach, so it is up to the instrumentals to distinguish the songs from one another. This isn't something the band are very successful at throughout the record, resulting into a monotonous soundscape that makes guest appearances by The Color Morale, The Plot In You, and Glass Cloud vocalists disappear into oblivion as the band races through the album at breakneck speed tempo most of the time.

Basically, Illuminate Me are missing the qualities that made other bands playing this style so good in the first place. Poison The Well on "Versions" sounded fairly similar to this, but they added pieces of haunting melody in between the instrumental pummeling to give the songs distinct passages to latch onto. Similarly, Norma Jean's Cory uses a melancholic and decipherable vocal style to his advantage exactly for this reason. The Chariot, well, those guys just go overboard with distortion and one-chord screeches so that's how they made their mark. ETID on the other hand add a whole lot of groove, and there's of course Keith Buckley's charismatic and ear-blistering delivery. Here, Illuminate Me have nothing that suggests they'll be remembered in a year or two's time, even if the record isn't outright terrible by any means.

6

Download: I Have Become A Corpse, The Porcelain God, No Sunshine In The Sunshine State
For the fans of: Norma Jean, Every Time I Die, Vanna, Botch
Listen: Facebook

Release date 15.07.2014
Tragic Hero Records

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