Israel's Ferium are back again with their “ain't quite death metal” style of death and core, which doesn't seem to have changed all that much on this second outing, surprisingly. I'm almost shocked to see the band on Metal Archives, but I'm sure it was hesitantly. I guess like Heaven Shall Burn, Ferium seem to straddle the boundary between death metal and deathcore so well that they deserve a place among the halls of the mighty. That being said, I've always loved Heaven Shall Burn and still do. Though it is there that I notice a glaring problem, which is that I”m being exposed to a thirty-six minute deathcore album with only a few bells and whistles to make things interesting. Tiran Ezra's vocal style here is one step away from a gut-punch, and all of the breakdowns being hit on this record aren't helping matters any. There are some thrashy moments to be had here, but I feel that I have to literally skim through this thing in order to find something of merit. Case in point, “She Feels Like Home” which is the disc's interlude of sorts. For once, I'm actually hearing melodies and something that isn't a fucking breakdown or a gang-vocal. Following that we have “Seven Years Of Seven Level” which seems to continue the mood continued in the previous song with added piano and electronic influence. I hate to say it, but these might be the two most entertaining tracks on the whole album. Interestingly, there's a nearly eight minute cut here called “A Free Man” which seems to add the spoken word elements we heard during the interludes into a full track. The disc does end with a very good melody section, which proves that at least it manages to do something right on the metallic side. Though after my listen, I only have to ask myself the mere question; “What in the hell happened here?” I honestly didn't think these guys could do any worse than their debut Reflections, which actually had some merit. There were some good moments on the disc in spite of things. Yet what I've been exposed to here is nothing more than angry deathcore with little rhyme or reason. There is NO SUBSTANCE on this album period. It is literally the same song over and over again, sans the interludes and the disc's closer perhaps. The same angry grunts, the same basic breakdowns and the same djent, djent, djent, djent, djent. What am I supposed to do with this? I believe I passed this by until I received a physical copy for review, which now meant that I had to give it a full write-up as I'm doing right now. I know I have a friend that tends to enjoy this kind of stuff, so I think I'll pass it to them when I see them in a few months. That being said, there are people like him that will actually enjoy this one so I can't just completely tear the band apart. They made the kind of record they wanted to make, made a worse record than what they started with and gave me an utterly bland performance. I'm almost insulted. Even so, the interludes show that there is still “something” here and maybe they'll build from this in the future. It certainly can't be much worse than this. Anyone could have made this, so I wouldn't recommend it and there are much better acts out there. Even so, if you like deathcore, you certainly could do worse.
(9 Tracks, 36:00)
5/10
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