Review Summary: What would you think if yet another metalcore band jumped onto the deathcore bandwagon?
Personally, when I heard DMIR was going for a more death metal sound, I was scared that their new material would be lame as hell. Luckily, that's not at all what we got. The three track demo is the perfect chunk of writing to make you hungry for more.
It seems Chris Penuel and Stu Ogran have grown quite a bit as writers; they no longer seem to throw breakdowns into their songs haphazardly, everything has more flow to it, the melodies they use are much heavier [dare I say XPUNCHGOREX] and creative. There's some wonderful sweeping sections in
He Is I And I Am Him, and extremely tight breakdowns. My only complaint is that there's only one short clean section at the end of
He Is I..., and that the solo in the middle of
Coming To Grips With Reality is kind of boring.
Vocally, Matt Sansom has defintitely improved incredibly as a vocalist, and has grown some badass chops. His highs aren't thickly layered and distorted, and his tone is a lot better, however his highs sound a lot more strained without the layering and distortion. Luckily his growling has gotten pretty incredible. He's got a powerful, harsh tone, and keeps it varied with aggressive mid-ranged vocals and well placed screams, as well as some great layering of the three together.
The rhythm section isn't as meaty as it could be though, and the drumming is extremely tight, but unfortunately not mixed as well as it could be, but this is still just a demo.
So basically, DMIR's grown a lot, and their new album's gonna kick a
ss
