Review Summary: I need a new pooper.
I was led to Sentinels by a friend’s gentle hand after having loudly advocated for the newest Car Bomb release, Meta, via social media. Obliging his confident recommendation, I turned to the first song of World Divide. Not one for bull***, the opening ambiance of Avidity was quick to awaken my skeptical, judgmental heart. I had been - and continue to be - growing weary of the incessant trend amongst new-era mathcore outfits to furnish their otherwise mind-bendingly technical songs with spacious, melodic bridge sections and fluffy openers. Look: if you can do it right, I can’t complain, but don’t demean your listener by assuming that they ‘need a break’ between bouts of brutality. A discerning listener always knows the difference between dynamism and lazy songwriting.
If you can't tell, it helps me to get my grievances out of the way quickly: World Divide does, to my chagrin, include one uninspired two-minute interlude. It may also include a few (precisely a few) brief passages that smack of a bit too much optimism for my liking.
Really, though, you know where this is all going: the rest of this release is madness. So much so that, upon finding that Google yielded precisely zero reviews for it, I was morally compelled to fill the void. From the first twenty seconds into the title track and beyond, Sentinels delivers an absolutely punishing array of technical, well-constructed mathcore compositions.
One more partial grievance: I won’t say that the vocals are immaculate (again, I am still coming down from the heights of Car Bomb’s newest release). The screaming here is not easily differentiated in style or tone from many other vocalists in the various domains of metal’s ‘X’-core genres, and this may be enough to put one off. I do think the man can scream, though. There's no denying it, at least inasmuch as he doesn't hide behind production. Never is one taken away from the fantastic guitar and drum work.
Among other reasons, music is to be appreciated for its eluding proper translation into common language. So I won’t aspire to the lofty task of giving the ‘play-by-play’ as regards this EP’s sound. Listen at your own peril.
