Signs Of The Swarm
To Rid Myself Of Truth
Century Media
Signs Of The Swarm have always stuck out from the deathcore pack as a slightly more ambitious beast and this album only goes further to compound that. Sure there’s breakdowns in the breakdown places that do what downtuned breakdowns do, fine. But Signs Of The Swarm truly come to life when they switch gear. Flightier tracks like lead single HELLMUSTFEARME, essentially a straight up death metal track played at a satisfying full tilt. It’s here when a breakdown hits hard. Because when your entire track sounds like a breakdown there’s no contrast to play off. Natural Selection brings morphing, warping guitar effects and is the first time this album’s truly ambitious production grabs your attention. There’s something very Sci-fi about this album with guitars sounding like lasers firing at you on the final beat down of Sarkazein. Closing track Creator actually sounds like the machines taking over at the end of mankind with its glitches and digital mashing. But this is before we get to the biggest surprise on this album which isn’t the guest spots from Will Ramos and Phil Bozeman that both sound exactly as you’d expect, nor is it the dual crossover attack of Jack Murray (156 Silence) and Johnny Crowder (Prison) no not them either. All are excellently delivered but not earth shattering. The biggest surprise is Forcing To Forget and its clean singing and this is where we realise once again that when you clean sing over a deathcore track it sounds immediately like Korn. This is actually a really good thing here and it gives the album some much needed light and shade. This is a great Deathcore album but once again the frustrating thing about this genre is that when everything is heavy, nothing is heavy. These moments of contrast are so important if impact is to be felt.
Review by George Miller