Review Summary: It's heavy.....and that's really about all there is to it.
It seems to me that Traitors' debut album,
The Hate Campaign, is aptly named. At a basic level, it illuminates their fairly thin, but adequate, political message. Simultaneously, this is about as hateful a record as deathcore gets. Traitors follow in the footsteps of deathcore titans The Acacia Strain, along with less celebrated newcomers Black Tongue, in making colossal, sludgy, and slow metal with tints of hardcore. The goal is, of course, heaviness to the highest degree possible, a pursuit that has been named since the dawn of the genre. Traitors doesn’t set the bar much higher with this effort, but it would be wrong to say they didn’t push the limits a bit. The instruments follow along the lines of the band’s predecessors, with extremely downtuned guitars at the forefront. Breakdowns come and go with the breeze, but they’re heavy enough to warrant attention. Traitors does succeed in injecting a bit more speed and flow into the formula, that lack thereof being the downfall of Black Tongue’s efforts, and
The Hate Campaign operates as a better version of the aforementioned band’s
Born Hanged EP. Traitors pack plenty of rage and menace into the album’s short runtime, enough to carry the record forward in plenty. The vocals aren’t particularly outstanding, but they fit the sound nicely with their angry tone. All in all,
The Hate Campaign is a short, nasty, dirty, and immensely heavy record for fans that aren’t searching for anything very thought-provoking or complex.
