Rating: 1/5
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Mind Over Metal Limerick 13

Rating: 0.5/5
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Mind Over Metal Limerick 12

Rating: 1.5/5

Empty emphatics, clichés, redundancy, and imitation: the tools unashamedly employed by The Acacia Strain. They are a band that instills anger for all the wrong reasons; catharsis for morons at best. Now on their fifth album, the Massachusetts quartet(?*) opts for Meshuggah-miming to lull the listener into believing the band is capable of progression.

Rating: 2/5

I am baffled as to why a band would balance their album this way, as if performing the dead man’s float, using their midsection to stay buoyant. And Hell Followed With lost their vocalist after recording but before releasing this second full-length; perhaps they should actually take a cue from this album title and gain a deeper understanding of how they interrelate before their next effort.

Overall, an album chock full of intensity and competent drumming. It feels a bit repetitive in spots and left me wanting to see them expand upon their slow, melodic chops.

Rating: 1.5/5

Now, here’s something interesting. Job for a Cowboy initially led the charge for deathcore to break into the public eye. Annotations of an Autopsy were one of the bands to follow the trend. JFAC would, however, shift styles to a much purer death metal sound. Now, it looks like AOAA is doing the same once again. How did one band gain so much power?

TTEOTD has come a long way since 2005′s Bloodlust. After switching vocalists and releasing the superior Malice, three-fifths of the band quit. This left bassist Jake Ososkie and founding guitarist Justin Longshore to regroup (literally). The end result finds the deathcore quintet inching ever closer toward death metal. Producer Eric Rutan (Hate Eternal/Morbid Angel) likely initiated this change. Skepis is self-produced, and I think much was learned down in Mana Studios.