Released: July 26, 2008
Maybe I'm just getting too old for this shit, but deathcore just leaves me cold. Take this EP from young Sydney five piece Thy Art is Murder for example. Open with a stabbing hardcore-style snare attack, play a technical death metal riff for one second, change to another riff for five seconds, fire off a short trilling burst of notes, go back to the technical death metal for a few seconds, then play a chugging breakdown. Repeat. For the next song, do exactly the same thing! Follow the formula four or five times and voila!, a deathcore EP.
"Infinite Death" is a pretty relentless collection of tracks that to an untrained ear are going to sound very much alike. The riffing pretty standard deathcore throughout and hardly changes from song to song; the arrangements and dynamics are fairly identical also, as if Thy Art is Murder wrote one song they liked so much they just changed it a little each time. There are a lot of albums around that can at first sound very samey and some -- Demanufacture by Fear Factory, for example, or City by Strapping Young Lad -- can be lauded as classics of their field. What distinguishes albums like those with an EP like this one is the presence of hooks and subtle melodies that only become apparent after a listen or two. "Infinite Death" lacks these to the point where only fleeting guitar solo in "Parasitic Autopsy" and the swirling trills of "Breeding Bacteria" do anything to differentiate them from each other.
The title track, however, is quite a stand-out, because while it essentially maintains the same structure as every other song, Thy Art is Murder does more with it. The main riff, while not much different to any of the others, has a solid, moshpit groove and an effective hook and they actually play it long enough for it to set, and the breakdown has a stumbling feel that makes it sound like it's being played backwards. It's also the longest song on the EP, allowing the band to cram the same number of ideas into it but spread them out a bit so they work more effectively.
Thy Art is Murder certainly has the chops to play this style of metal, but in the end "Infinite Death" is just too thoroughly generic and repetitive to appeal to more than their fans, and even they might get over it pretty quickly.
- I'll Show You God
- Whore to a Chainsaw
- Parasitic Autopsy
- Breeding Bacteria
- Infinite Death
Rating: 48%
