Loathe: The Cold Sun

Metalcore might not be going through a renaissance at the moment, but there is most definitely an increase in bands willing to do interesting things with the style compared to even just 3 years prior in 2014. Among this new crop is a band from Liverpool by the name of Loathe, with a grimy, progressive, industrial hued take on the style.

In the footsteps of Code Orange and Knocked Loose, Loathe have a dark foreboding atmosphere melded onto some of the filthiest riffs in the genre, yet they manage to make themselves distinguishable from the pack with a number of features. For one, they’re more indebted to nu metal than first wave metalcore, with this coming out in a number of ways. Like many UK metalcore bands, the vocals bear a strong influence from Sam Carter of Architects, yet the auditory violence of those screams blends well with some soaring cleans and robotic melancholy woven through the record. The dark textures that helped Slipknot stand above the pack are present here, with a mixture of the foreboding and the melancholic. Their use of melody here doesn’t distract from the heaviness or darkness of this album, but rather accentuates it, with both catchy choruses, tortured vocal lines and some lead lines  The low tuned guitars may be indebted to djent but the filth and ferocity of this album keeps them from falling into just a repetition of what’s gone on before. They borrow from a number of different subgenres throughout this album, from the murky industrial of “The Omission” to the techy flourishes of “East Of Eden” and even venturing into black metal territory with the closer of “P.U.R.P.L.E.”. If any two tracks here sum the record up in its entirety it’d be the two first singles, “Dance On My Skin” and “It’s Yours”. “Dance On My Skin” is a disgustingly heavy track, with its grinding, stuttering riff constantly smacking you across the face, while “It’s Yours” features an industrial stomp to the riffs with one of this album’s hugest choruses.

However this is not merely a grab—bag of styles all thrown at the wall. The Cold Sun is a conceptual album, a post-apocalyptic tale as shown with repeated musical motifs, frequent cries of “Loathe As One” and a number of aesthetic choices made in the videos released for the album as well as its Akira influenced cover art. While as a whole the record flows extremely well, in a genre where albums are known more for being cohesive collections of songs rather than extended pieces of music, the presence of four instrumental cuts on a 12 track album may put some listeners off. The furious momentum of the first half of the album does wind down somewhat around the second half, the emotional weight brought on by the build-up to “Babylon…” however is truly devastating. This is a band unashamed of doing something new with the formula, a band with ambitions and the chops to match.

So who does this record appeal to? It may seem that they are awkwardly placed; being too nasty for scene kids and too melodic for the slam/beatdown/bands that just rip off Hatebreed fans, but this album is one well deserving of an audience.  If you’ve been a fan of Code Orange and Knocked Loose and want to see whether that style develops into a fully-fledged thing, this should be well on your radar. If you were left cold by that last Slipknot album and wish Sworn In would stop being as cringy as they are as they’ve a lot of potential, get on this album ASAP. This is a band that genuinely deserves to go massive, and hopefully this album pushes them to that point. It's out on Sharptone Records, streams on Spotify and YouTube so get on that shit folks.

Nine “fuck me this is a bit heavy”’s out of ten “just like the 90’s”.
Standout Tracks: Dance On My Skin, Babylon…

For Fans Of: Architects. Code Orange, old Northlane, Barrier

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