It also happens to be a brand new comeback/reunion album so let me make it clear as early as the second sentence of the review that I have nothing of their previous material to compare this with. But that shouldn't matter really because from this album, all I have is a huge grin on my face because I know I've stumbled upon a gem of a band here.

Home to the indie record company, Bieler Bros, these guys consisting of Jeff Jaworski(Vocals), Jeff Irwin(Guitar), Mike Martin(Bass) and Mitch Wheeler(Drums) do metalcore. Don't fret, I'll explain. I'm only talking metal + hardcore in the Sick of it all, DRI, Cro-mags vein. They've supposedly been doing so since day one, ie., 1995 when they formed. But they're not as straight-forward as those classic acts, at least not on this album. They bring in the depth of some of the noisy post-metal bands like Neurosis and give it the twist that others like Unsane and Mastadon have brought to this breed of heavy music. So you get the aggression, deep down-tuned mostly-mid-paced riffs with layered guitars influenced by equal parts of both crossover and Neurosis school of metal, you get the groove that at times sticks to the basics and often gets into the progressive territory (with both experimentations and time signatures) and you get monstrous yelled out vocals suiting the music perfectly fine. Songs are pretty varied throughout the album and I simply gave up on spotting clunkers so this is a complete hit with me. Full points to the production too.

By the time the album is over, rather calmly by the way with Dark Sun Sets, I knew that I've got to hunt down their older albums and find out about all the bands they're related to. If you're cool with the convenient and lazy references that I've made in the previous paragraph, you know you should give this a good go. These guys are fucking great and I'll now go get some fucking shut eye.

Links:

Official Site
Official Myspace