To make this easy and let you decide whether to finish reading this review or not — I’ll lay it out right away: Alabama’s Gideon are essentially a typical Facedown Records band. They are Christian and they play metalcore.

There.

While not as impressive as label mates Your Memorial or the new Hope for the Dying or Facedown alum Sleeping Giant, Gideon‘s debut effort is a sturdy example of burly metallic hardcore like Hatebreed or Full Blown Chaos (mouth full of nuts’n’bolts vocals, double bass chugging and gang chants) mixed with typically Christian, lighter elements of other Facedown acts (clean choruses and a few melodic shimmery moments). It fits in nicely next to the labels enjoyable but hardly groundbreaking roster of Onwards to Olympas For Today , In the Midst of Lions and such.

The hardcore element is actually pretty convincing and has a pretty tough sound when the band is stomping and snarling with their Hatebreed-ish gait even more so as vocalist Daniel McWhorter has some Jamey Jasta in his throaty shouts. After the obligatory opening march “Costs, most of tracks like “Unworthy”, “False Profits” and “Kingdom Minded” have ample girth and rousing hardcore beef that’s enough to get any mosh pits going, Christian or otherwise.

But like so many of their Christian peers, Gideon feel the need to balance out their burlier, heavier side with forced injection of grace and more amicable tones. Like the Old Testament vs the New Testament the vengeful, violent God is colliding with a peaceful, caring God and it doesn’t quite convince. For some bands it works–Becoming the Archetype and Sleeping Giant being prime examples–but for Gideon, the balance just isn’t as convincing. In part because the rougher, rumbling hardcore is really rather good, so the sudden bursts of grace and clean vocals stand out. For example along with the aforementioned “Unworthy”, “Foundation” starts as a enjoyable, hefty metallic canter, but the clean chorus comes across as contrived and a bit wimpy. It’s not that the clean vocals are bad or whiny, they just seem forced and rather clichéd in the midst of some rather tumultuous hardcore. They even try their hand a Misery Signals-ish melodic moments for otherwise hefty closer “Dreams”.

Still, there’s enough good hardcore here to tolerate the forced Christian metal clichés to warrant some attention. If they had keep their focus on being heavy and forceful, they could actually be a Christian version of Full Blown Chaos.

[Visit the band's website]

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