An increasing number of bands are dropping the ‘core’ from their sound and focusing on the metal. Bands like August Burns Red, Beneath the Massacre, Fear My Thoughts, Job For A Cowboy, Misericordiam; all new far leaner and direct, less trendy incarnations of their former selves, and one such act who seems to have made the transition into far more metal realms is former metalcore/deathcore act Through The Eyes of The Dead.

With the addition of former Premonitions of War and Deadwater Drowning (a horribly promising but short lived act) vocalist Nate Johnson, as well as a killer production from Hate Eternal’s Erik Rutan, TTEOFD have delivered a seething, ripping ball of almost pure death metal with only the scarcest traces of core influences.

Of course, this is still short haired former hardcore/metalcore kids playing death metal, so die hards may still turn their nose up, but on a purely musical level, if you hit ‘play’ on Malice and let opener “Failure in the Flesh” or “To Wage a War” runs its tumultuous course with no idea who the band was or what they looked like, you’d be picturing a group of hairy, hulking misshapen Floridians or Polacks.

Still the occasional Swedish lick and lumbering breakdown (i.e. “As Good as Dead”) does arise amid the impressive intensity and Johnson’s rather intimidating bellows but when listening to moments like the excellent angular groove of the title track or superb, almost Stockholm inspired (but short lived) tones of closer “Pull the Trigger” any core based biased will get simply blown away by a band that has stripped down, stepped up and delivered a pretty direct, violent set of sonic assaults that should impress even the most grizzled death metal fan, though won’t change deathcore or the death metal genre too drastically.

[Visit the band's website]

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