CROSS THE LIPS OF GRACE: The Epilogue of Suffering

Released: April 11

Deathcore has pretty much left me cold as a genre. To my ears, it's just a bunch of screamy, technical-for-the-sake-of-it bullshit that might be fantastic live with people going nuts everywhere but on CD just sounds like repetitive, tryhard scenester rubbish. So either there is more to it than that, or Cross the Lips of Grace just has a somewhat unique take on it, because The Epilogue of Suffering is by far one of the most interesting deathcore albums I've heard.

This opens with a theme-like organ surge that gradually builds towards the second track, a fearsome, almost terrifying assault of guitar noise, roars and screams of despair that sounds like the gates of Hell opening. This in turn leads to "The Miasmic Stench of Misery", a combination of omnious, Morbid Angel-style slab-like riffs, deathcore grooves and incomprehensible screaming. It's certainly the vocals that give this band that "core" tag, because musically these guys seem to draw far more from the likes of Suffocation and Dying Fetus than Despised Icon (could there be a more aptly-named band?). "Though Your Wilderness of Pain" is laden with sweeps, but they're never overdone, a wildly melodic guitar solo plays counterpoint with the surging miasma of "Synaesthesia" and "Your Filth Sickens Me" is a heavy as fuck mind-rape. The album's centerpiece is the three-part "Servant of Flesh", an odyssey full of chunky grooves and monstrously heavy riffage, rounded off with a strings-and-synths final section that is unfortunately about five minutes too long. That's the only real criticism I have of this utterly fearsome album of relentlessly extreme music. The Epilogue of Suffering simply doesn't let up.

Metal snobs who turn up their nose from anything remotely -coreish could do worse than give these blokes a listen.

1. Ortus
2. Abolition/Annihilation
3. The Miasmic Stench of Misery
4. Born into Bondage
5. Servant of Flesh - Enslavement
6. Servant of Flesh - Domination
7. Servant of Flesh - Subservient
8. Through Your Wilderness of Pain
9. The Icarus Demise
10. Your Filth Sickens Me
11. Synaethesia
12. Poena

Rating: 96%