As I have said a few times before, If you are going to send a self released 4 song EP for review (we get a lot of demos), you’d better be really good and stand out to get some coverage, and luckily for Virginia’s With Burning Contempt, their debut 4 song demo made it into the right hands of pretty much the person person to cover it.
Despite the Deathcore-ish name and logo, With Burning Contempt is nothing core at all. They play a huge , mid range , Swedish death meta l(think classic Grave), d beat, black metal amalgamation that’s pretty dang awesome. The guitar tone and bass are massive with a burly buzzsaw rumble (I’m reminded of Fatalist‘s or Invasion‘s overall tone) , and the 4 songs are plenty adequate even if they leave me wanting more with only a 16 minute run time.
But that 16 minutes is very enjoyable. The D-beat gallops and grooves melds with higher register almost black metal vocals to make for a energetic pace and a brisk, urgent delivery for the most part. “Defaced” is the EP’s slower, loping track that plays like one of Dismember‘s Massive Killing Capacity songs, but the other three tracks are more cantankerous and crusty. Closer “Untrue Weapons” despite a few bars of almost a doom plod, delivers punk fueled bursts amid a hefty Clandestine era stomp. The remaining two tracks, “Red Visions” and “We Are Nothing” (even with its gnarly mid song groove) are middle ground numbers that trundle along with simple, steady D beat salvos and feral snarls.
But the allure here really is the guitar tone, as its an early contender for best guitar tone of this young year, and I hope they keep the exact sound for any future releases that I’ll be excited for.
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Wow, the allure of an album or release is the guitar tone. So does that mean a release of the band tuning or warming up would be worthwile? I guess I know why most of the popular bands are pretty boring or terrible. Metal fans are more concerned with how a band sounds rather than riffs, songwriting or unique ideas. Blah…
on Mar 21st, 2013 at 19:29Uh, for some people, the allure of an album is in the vocals – for others, the drumming. What’s the big deal if Eric’s commenting on a band’s guitar tone hitting the right note [excuse the pun]. Not every band needs to be some bleeding edge ensemble. For a lot of people, just hearing competent metal of a certain “sound” [like that Sunlight Studios sound] is enough. Grow up.
on Mar 22nd, 2013 at 04:21Yeah, don’t want to speak for Eric, but his third paragraph pretty much speaks to the songwriting on the album. Most people will know what to expect riff and songwriting wise based on that. D-beat + Dismember and I know what I am in for.
As commented above, some people love the ‘Sunlight’ sound while others don’t really care. For me the guitar sounds somewhat compressed and not as dirty as say Binah or has the heft of Bloodbath.
Nonetheless, a fine debut and I am interested in hearing more.
on Mar 22nd, 2013 at 07:22Thisblacksession,
My point exactly, too many metal fans rely on judging a band on superficial choices, their sound, rather than musical choices. That is why we have too many bands that “sound” a certain way, but offer nothing interesting musically. If those you describe enjoy the vocal or drums for the muscial performance, fine, just spend some time and see how many metal fans dismiss a band wholly on production techniques. And I am very grown up, hence why I expect more from my reviewers and bands.
Cal,
Actually the fourth paragraph of Eric’s review sum it up. If it weren’t for the guitar tone of the album, there would be no allure to the musical release at all.
Thanks!
on Apr 12th, 2013 at 05:52