Review Summary: Metalcore is making its way back around the mountain.
If you really think about it, metalcore is a pretty diverse genre. It's kind of like a scene within a scene. People may (wrongly) think that it’s nothing but breakdowns and growls and sappy cleans but bands like the UK’s Killing Me Softly are proving that that’s not the case at all. Their debut album
Autumn Lost in Silence is an enlightening throwback to the late 90s/early 2000s scene and it couldn’t have turned out better.
Sadly bands like (recent) All That Remains and Bad Omens, among others, give the genre a bad name. People will think that metalcore is nothing but generic breakdowns and laughable clean vocals over occasional monotonous screaming. Killing Me Softly is the exact opposite of that, bordering on pure screamo a lot of the time with painful and unhinged shrieks and melodic mathy riffage that wouldn’t sound out of place on a melodeath album. Yet these guys don’t do the whole melodeath/metalcore mashup of bands like Heaven Shall Burn and Darkest Hour. This is pure adrenaline at its finest. The mathy riffs will have your head turning every which way while it is being bashed in.
Killing Me Softly’s reliance on breakdowns is as low as it can be, and yet they’re perfectly placed and come at just the right when they ARE present. Just when the blizzard of riffs might be getting to be too much, here they come with a NASTY, stank face inducing breakdown to interrupt in the best way possible. That’s what separates good bands from great metalcore bands to me. Can you supplement the breakdowns with actual good music and killer banshee shrieks around them? These guys sure do that with ease.
Speaking of banshee shrieks, the vocals here are absolutely nuts. They almost remind me of early State Faults vocals in how messily awesome they are. They might not be technically proficient but who gives a ***? They sound absolutely deranged in the best way possible and tie all the riffage together to make one whole kick ass record.
Autumn Lost in Silence sounds like a tribute to every great, unknown, lofi metalcore band that came before it. The production is perfectly raw and psychotic. Everything just comes together so well here. Killing Me Softly are an exciting band for the metalcore genre. Hopefully they stick around for a while.
