Calmed By The Tides Of Rain released the killer album, Phaeton, recently, that I raved about in my review on here and now the Russian slam deathcore band are back with a digital only 3 song ep, Hives. One of the things that I spoke about is that they had more death than core to their sound and were not a boring sounding deathcore band like what The Acacia Strain has now turned into. If this is the direction the band is headed in than hot damn, Calmed By The Tides Of Rain has just upped the ante in the deathcore genre.

“Burning Down the Hive” opens the ep with an acoustic guitar piece along with electric guitar melodies that sound eerily similar to Fallujah. Then the song erupts into a Meshuggah like djent styled heaviness and the band picks up some speed in the beginning. This is something CBTTOR did not previously have, speed. They were more of a mid paced-slower style deathcore band. Regardless, this song is HEAVY and the vocals are textbook Whitechapel and very powerful. There is some killer double bass going on here and than the 2.28 brings forth a nice bass bomb drop and hell yeah, a nice little blast beat at the 4.10 mark that drops into a violent bass bomb induced slam. “Cycles of Hatred” is up next and has a very cool guitar intro. Another thing separating these guys from the rest of the deathcore pack is their use of interesting guitar melodies that have a spacey feel to them and as stated earlier, having some Fallujah influence to them. This tune alternates nicely between speeds, fast and slow and the 1.15 mark has some thunderous drums. 1.55 has a killer bass guitar moment that goes into a violent slam that will make you want to do a tornado whirlwind super drop kick. The song ends as it began with the guitar parts-nice tie in.

“Shores” ends the ep and my neck hurts like hell from all the head banging to the stop/start riffing on this track. I imagine if Meshuggah would have went all out death metal on Chaosphere, this is what they would have sounded like. Anyway, the 4.15 part kicks into gear with a nice brutal death/thrash faster pace, again CBTTOR utilizing the alternating speeds to their advantage on this ep. At the end of the day, this is only a mere $2.99 to download and worth it. Hives is the best deathcore sounding music I have heard in a long time, due to CBTTOR incorporating other interesting elements/influences into their already ferociously heavy sound. Essential!

[Visit the band's website]

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