Produced by Roman Koester
Released: May 2009
The Red Shore has moved in leaps and bounds in the past two years. Each of their releases has displayed a solid progression in technique and direction, and anyone who still wants to brand these guys as deathcore pretenders after hearing this album needs to take a good hard look at themselves.
Lost Verses is a collection of early tracks, re-recorded and reworked into the band’s current style, and that’s very much a modern technical death metal assault ablaze with razor-sharp guitars, mountains of groove and booming and pummelling drums. Even in their formative metalcore phase, The Red Shore always had something extra to offer, and here they add snatches of black metal-style keyboard melodies and tremolo picking to take their music into a new dimension. Unlike a lot of other current bands going for a technical approach, The Red Shore don’t try to step all over each other or fill every space with a sweep. Instead, they just get down to the business of brutality.
“The Valentine’s Day Massacre” opens the album with a keyboard surge and grim shriek worthy of Emperor before ripping atoms apart with death metal guitar violence. “Effigy of Death” and “Flesh Couture” – previously only ever played live – are immense slabs of head-pounding brutal force and on album stand-out “Knives and Wolves” they unload a loose, catchy moshpit groove that’s impossible to resist.
Guitarist Roman Koester’s production allows his band’s music room to breathe, giving the Lost Verses a vitality and immediacy a lot of current death metal lacks. The drums are huge, the guitars are ferocious and heavy and Jamie Hope’s diverse vocal onslaught is an impressive array of barks, shrieks, growls and roars that would rival those of Trevor Strnad from The Black Dahlia Murder. This is a bold statement in metal brutality from a band still yet to peak. Awesome.
- The Valentine's Day Massacre
- Sink or Swim
- Flesh Couture
- Knives and Wolves
- Pulling Teeth
- Effigy of Death
- I Only Smile When You're Bleeding
- Thy Devourer
- When Doesn't Kill You
Rating: 90%
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