Review Summary: The guitars are all over the place, the bass is solid, the drums are almost great, and the vocals are what they are. If you are into Deathcore then this would be a good record to listen to every now and then, but otherwise this is not worth your time.
Lifeforce record, best known for releasing early records from the bands Between the Buried and Me and Trivium, has grown into a major independent metal label. Burning Skies’ has released their third album,
Greed.Filth.Abuse.Corruption, on May the in the US and Canada. Hailing from Bristol, this UK band has been making their own noise since 2002. They’ve taken old school grindcore and death metal and infused modern American metal to create their sound today. Are they close to making it big or are they just another Hot Topic scene band that will fade away or drastically change their sound when a new metal fad comes out?
The vocal duties are taken care of by Merv Hembrough with backing vocals coming from Liam Phelan (Guitars). Merv has some range that really helps to improve the lasting value of the record. The vocalist has an arsenal of vocal styles to choose from: a nice gruff vocal style, death growls, pig squeals, and screeching screams. The inconsistent style of those four is the screeching screams. The go from complimenting the other vocals during that part of the song to not fitting at all, ex. “
Spat Out And Stamped On”. The gruff vocals are, for the most part, great; they are even better when they are sped up, ex. "
You Don't Have To Be Dead To Be In Hell".
The main features of any Deathcore band, vocals wise, are the growls and pig squeals. There are some nice growls gracing the album, ex. opening growls on "You Don't Have To Be Dead To Be In Hell" and cleaner death growls on “
Y.G.F.F.”. The pig squeals are all pulled of very well except for the ones on the track "You Don't Have To Be Dead To Be In Hell". The best vocal performance is found on "
Emocalypse", which features a great change of pace gang vocal part, followed closely behind by “
Sticky Richard”.
The guitarists are Chuck Creese and Liam. There are a lot of chugging guitars found on the record, most of the time their not benefiting the record, ex. “Emocalypse”. The only guitar intro that is of any note is the great one on “Emocalypse”. There are only two instrumental breaks that really highlight the guitars, The better of the two is “
Warhate”. After a solid guitar riff to start the album off, the riffs have their difficulties. You have a nice slow riff near the end of "You Don't Have To Be Dead To Be In Hell" but then you get a bad riff on “
Slashed, Thrashed and F*cked Up Beyond All Recognition”. The difficulties continue with the breakdowns. The middle of "
To Be The Man Who Has To Beat The Man" feels like it went from one breakdown to another while the one found on “Spat Out and Stamped On” is horrible. The breakdowns do pick up with a great one found at the end of "Emocalypse".
The drummer, Phil Tolfree, is very good and does his job very well. Phil can use his double bass pedals pretty fast but he uses them really well on “Warhate” while using a great double bass and cymbals combo during the middle of “To Be The Man Who Has To Beat The Man”. Most of the time the drums shine during the intros of songs, this includes the slower drum line on “You Don’t Have To Be Dead To Be In Hell”. There is one case where the drummer makes a song catchy and that is near the end of “
Abuse To Confuse”. Mostly in the background of the double bass is the bassist, Stephen Ives. He does periodically come out of the drum’s shadow for some solid bass lines; this includes the beginning and end of both “Warhate” and “
Rounding Up The Cattle”.
Greed.Filth.Abuse.Corruption is an album that at times can be great but at other times can be very horrible and cookie-cutter Deathcore. The album as a whole is less than thirty minutes long, and there is really nothing that sticks out to you after you have listened to it. The song titles also are what they are, lame attempts at being funny and should’ve been cut down to no more than four words. I know what you are asking, what about the sound overall? The guitars are all over the place, the bass is solid, the drums are almost great, and the vocals are what they are. If you are into Deathcore then this would be a good record to listen to every now and then, but otherwise this is not worth your time.
Rating (?/5)
Vocals:
2.5
Lyrics:
2
Guitars:
3
Bass:
3
Drums:
3.5
Production:
3.5
Creativity:
2
Lasting Value:
1
