Review Summary: Finally, at long last, a new metalcore band that doesn't care about the latest trend.
Metalcore is a genre that is meant to sound pissed off. Pure adrenaline and hard-hitting riffage is what the genre is all about. Add in some schizophrenic vocal performances and the occasional head-bobbing breakdown and you have the perfect formula for what the genre is all about. Take the 90s and bands like Converge, Deadguy, Botch and plenty others with some semi-messy, raw production and you have the perfect recipe. Ethic is a brand new metalcore band hailing from Minnesota and they perfectly embody what made this glorious genre so great in the first place.
Too many modern metalcore bands are focused on adding different elements to their music whether it be mixing the sound with shoegaze, nu metal, pop punk or anything of the like. Ethic doesn't give a damn about any of that. All they care about are riffs and sounding as jacked up as humanly possible. Their debut demo is just about 12 minutes of pure insane riffage, drums that will knock you on your unsuspecting behind and a vocal performance that can mimic some of the greats of the genre. This demo is completely unhinged in the best way possible and sounds as if it could've come out in 1995, something that many fans of the genre didn't think was possible in the year 2026. These guys don't care about recent trends, they care about sounding as pissed off as they possibly can while caving the listener's skull in with a baseball bat.
In a world full of bands like Loathe, Motionless in White, Boundaries and countless others that water the genre down to its absolute worst and riffless, Ethic is here to remind us all that REAL metalcore still exists. It's nice to see a new band that doesn't care about following useless trends in the current state of this genre. It does my heart good to find a new metalcore band that focuses solely on what the genre was meant to sound like when it was created. Nobody cares about twinkly production and ***ty riffs that sound like they were recorded in a vacuum and have no punch. This demo is exactly how metalcore should sound: raw, angry and beatdown.
