Review Summary: Year of the Knife cut their teeth with their debut and wear their influences on their sleeve.
The trends of modern metalcore with slight hardcore influence have been cemented with bands such as Code Orange, Vein, Knocked Loose, and Jesus Piece. Fast, punishing riffs, breakdowns, harsh vocals, and absolutely pounding drumming. Some bands have an electronic element added to them, some have shorter songs, some have detuned guitars, some have particularly high pitched screams. Yet the mission statement is the same for each band: make music that elicits a strong desire in the listener to swing their arms around and decimate anything or anyone unlucky enough to be in their path of destruction.
Year of the Knife truthfully does nothing entirely new with the genre and instead takes much more of a meat and potatoes approach. The guitars have a tendency to play tremolo highs for main or intro riffs and stomping lows for breakdowns. These riffs are sure to get the blood pumping, but they certainly aren’t innovative. As for the rhythm section, the drums employ a more stomping, plotting, bass pedal heavy approach and the bass unfortunately falls victim to the genre trope of sounding almost nonexist and overtly muddy. The vocals are visceral and punishing, somewhat similar to Corey Taylor’s shout in the best possible ways, and the lyrics, as the name Internal Incarceration would imply, are quite dark and depressive.
So if Year of the Knife is so derivative what makes the album worth listening to? Simply put, there is a certain energy from thunderous, plotting breakdowns with singers screaming athemic, aggressive and self-deprecating statements that never gets old. Internal Incarceration is filled to the brim with crunchy, heavy, and in your-face riffs, punchy percussion, and enough phrases to shout angrily at the top of your lungs while slam dancing in the living room for days. They employ the start and stop song structure quite well. The breakdowns specifically are wonderful with the pinnacle being the last minute or song of “Eviction” which employs the age old genre trope of slow breakdown transitioning to an even slower breakdown exquisitely. In addition, the fast paced and blisteringly loud moments on songs such as “Get It Out” and “This Time” are a delightful counterbalance.
Year of the Knife created an enjoyable, energetic, and fist-pumpingly belligerent album. It isn’t genre defining, but it is performed very well and fans of this specific sound will certainly appreciate Internal Incarceration; however, there isn’t much here for those who already haven’t meshed with the genre.
