Originally written by Sasha Horn
We’ve played this game before, Mal and I, but with a different album title. In 2007, their debut, Entities, took on “deathcore” while clutching every single cliche in the book and running fast with them, salivating the whole way. This 2009 mainstream and streamlined Dawn Of Reprisal deal is walking tall with the core-typical. They’re swingin’ those been-there-done-thats around like kiddish wallet-chains; flaunting them. Almost as if they’ve allowed themselves a vacation from chewing, now that they think they can swallow them whole with a throat the size of a Metal Blade. It sadly leaves Dawn indecipherable from the tons of other furious-cum-fashionable Wal-Mart and Target store everyday-low-priced temptations. Horrible timing considering the recent weight-gain of fellow Brits, Sylosis, and the girth of the new offerings from Lamb Of God and God Forbid, that frankly, make like vice-grips on Malefice’s new twig.
I did find one lowlight here, “An Architect Of Demise,” that would be the most saving-est of saving graces had it not sounded like a Blythe and Co. toss-off (I’m paying a compliment to their musicianship, can’t you tell?). The other nine tunes you will forget while you’re listening to them. True story.
Production? All of the regularity I’ve come to expect from a bigger budget. Not the kind of raw and underfed bite that starved Entities of its cosmetics, thus getting to the heart of them. That gnaw is now gone.
These dudes are obviously capable, but oblivious to their capabilities this year, and for the record it does not make me happy to be the bearer of bad tidings because they had it so right not so long ago. Bring that beat back.
File under something.
