Review Summary: The 2022 metalcore comeback you've never heard of.
The last several years have been pretty nuts for comeback records in various subsects of the hardcore scene! Many bands we thought were history have popped back up to put us through the emotional ringer once again, and in a lot of cases doing a really good job at it. It seems that being locked indoors for a couple years has given plenty of musicians to the time to dust off the old guitar and give the whole band thing a shot once again, and while I can't say the circumstances are ideal, it's a real treat to have artists like City of Caterpillar, Gospel, The Number Twelve Looks Like You, The Sawtooth Grin, Alexisonfire and several others giving us new stuff to chew on and talk about.
However, one of these artists has been a bit more elusive than the rest; that being Germany's little-known metalcore outfit Kashee Opeiah, whose debut album
Panic In Solitude revealed itself to me shortly after it's release as I was browsing the website CDbaby.com. It was 2006 and I had only been getting into heavy music for the last couple of years or so, with bands like The Chariot, Norma Jean and Underoath’s then-recent album
Define the Great Line being the backbone of my blossoming taste. I only had access to 15-second samples on the website but they were more than enough for young me to know I was interested; I asked for the album for Christmas and it became an instant favorite. The super heavy off-time palm-muted rhythms, galloping and often jazzy drumming, occasional gorgeous clean guitar passages and the powerful screams were exactly what I wanted and was more than enough to keep me satiated for a long time. Of course I would be super excited for what they did next, especially after they dropped a 90-second demo teaser on their myspace! Finally we would be hearing what could only be a glorious follow-up!
...except nothing happened. It took until 2010 for them to make a facebook page, then 2013 to announce they had dropped all prior recorded material out of dissatisfaction and another year to announce they'd begun recording new material. Updates were incredibly sporadic until finally, in 2016, they announced that recording had been finished! ...only for them to disappear off the face of the earth once again. This story might sound incredibly familiar to people who have ever supported a band’s Kickstarter project to fund a new album (Trenches or Kidcrash anyone?). All seemed hopeless until finally, December 30th, 2022, after SIX complete years of silence, they drop their brand new album
THE BARRIERS, THE CARRIERS! Holy ***, is this even real? And to ask an even bigger question, is it good???
Yea, it's really good! Now it's pretty obvious that overhyping something like this will almost always net disappointment, but I can honestly say that I genuinely really like this album even if they've changed things up a bit since we last heard from them. The recording here is more stripped-down and raw than what we heard on
Panic, though this is most likely attributable to it being a self-funded/recorded project rather than a studio effort funded by a label. The result is an album that's not nearly as dense and crushing as we're used to hearing from these guys. That might not sound like a positive, but it fits the vibe here as the the production is not the only thing that contributes to this.
The overall songwriting has lent a hand to this shift as well, with the emphasis on palm-muted chugging riffs being mostly dropped in favor of a more classic metalcore sound, but still featuring lots of stop/start rhythms and the occasional odd time signature. It's clear that Kashee Opeiah hasn't lost any of their prior ferocity, but it's being employed in a slightly different way than before. Opener "Paralyses" does a fairly good job at prepping listeners for what's to come, being chock full of catchy riffs that showcase both their penchant for minor 2nds (or "panic chords" as mathcore fans have lovingly dubbed them) as well as some of their post-hardcore influence with a brief passage about a minute in that bring bands like Frodus to mind. It's not even the heaviest or most chaotic track on the record, being immediately usurped by the following ripper "Ages and Cages" which instantly throws down with some dissonant riffing before going into some groove that will make any Zao fan salivate, all before leading into a crushing climax and finally fading into some light drumming and eerie synths. Late cut "The Distance of Relatives" feels like it combines the best of both worlds with a faster and more frantic pace while maintaining the more melodic vibe of the first track.
The two big highlights here for me have to be the centerpiece "A Call to Harms" and the closer "Lights and Undelights." The former is the longest track on the album at just over seven minutes, and not a second is wasted. It opens in appropriately heavy fashion, but before long gives way into some steady snare hits embellished by horns before dashing back into some more heavy riffing. This drops once again into a second buildup as the band drops into a steady groove as the horns return to accompany a passionately screamed vocal rant that almost feels like a tribute to The Chariot. The final track on the album is only slightly shorter at six minutes, but feels similarly epic with returning horns and the only spot of clean vocals on the album, giving the song an air of finality.
If you're reading this as a fan of metalcore or post-hardcore, you'd be doing yourself a favor to check out this band that has gone virtually unknown for almost two decades, and this isn't a bad place to start. While they're not necessarily pushing the envelope, but the fact that this came out at all is a New Year's Eve miracle to me and I'm glad it's a great time.
