Review Summary: holy shit...
4 of 5 thought this review was well writtenGood God. Mouth of the Architect have finally cut the bull sh
it and release a straight up a
ss kicking. Containing only 4 songs this EP is better than their entire back catalogue, and why? Because Mouths have stripped all that unnecessary wankery and filler from their previous releases, *cough*
Ties That Bind, and decided to just rip off
Cult of Luna in the most glamorous of ways - and I for one am not complaining. I’d rather they trudged around this (almost overly) ambitious epic tomfoolery than try becoming the leaders in a genre that they’re far from headlining. Or at least those were my feelings before I heard this.
Album opener and title track ‘The Violence Beneath’ literally forces its will upon you with a healthy dynamic of gut wrenching growls and near devastating riffing. It’s so heavy that they probably could have released that song alone and I’d be ok with this release, but they didn’t and it’s all for the better. You see they’ve learned how to stay interesting which of course was my fear when I downloaded this. The band has always known how to create excellent climaxes and drop offs, but the points in between were usually as worthless as the 90 minutes smack dab in the middle of
Revenge of the Fallen – and arguably just as long. Yet track two,
Buried Hopes proves me wrong and again I’m not complaining. It’s got some wicked guitar licks that establish all the cool time switch ups and what not, but what’s best improved is the vocals department.
Restore for example, does this interplay of choking vocals underneath the burly leads and it works every time.
Short and sweet the album pulls no hidden punches, and as dense as it sometimes feels the album really doesn’t take long to sink in. Closer
In Your Eyes sums up all the progression the band has made thus far with an
Isis-like intro the guys ditch the rugged metal sounds of the former and cruise out on a beautiful post metal tune. Often nothing but another “post-something band” ‘The Violence Beneath’ beckons to be right next to ‘A Determinism of Morality’ as the best post-metal release of the year and it’s only an EP.
