Review Summary: Expectations can be cruel.
The Callous Daoboys 2022 release,
Celebrity Therapist, was a highly acclaimed record. It pushes the mathcore genre into new areas for exploration with a consistently dark tone while still balancing it with sillier moments. An album like this will naturally raise the bar for the next release by any band. The follow-up EP,
God Smiles Upon the Callous Daoboys, fails to meet that bar, making it feel like a step back while still, admittedly, delivering some solid new tracks.
What clearly establishes the EP as a step back is the bigger focus on hooks rather than the frantic yells and panic chord flurries. The worst offender of this is
Waco Jesus causing it to ultimately feel rather generic and boring. This track sounds like something any modern metalcore/mathcore band could come up with. The chorus is anthemic, the vocals are catchy, and it does deal with a few cool ideas, yet it ends up sounding hollow.
Thankfully,
Waco Jesus is the only major bump this EP hits. The other tracks contain much more of what made The Callous Daoboys blow up in the first place.
Pushing the Pink Envelope is overloaded with fun, frenetic riffage alongside the more subdued and hook-driven moments. It feels like the band's take on The Dillinger Escape Plans ‘Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants’.
The final track on the EP is much more reminiscent of the bands style on
Celebrity Therapist, however
Designer Shroud of Turin is a perfect example of how the EP fails in one area that their sophomore album excelled in, which were its transitions. The track is filled to the brim with great yet crazy ideas, from a rap segment to a calypso segment and saxophone appearing in multiple parts of the track; however, each change-up has a janky, unnatural-sounding transition. The song is a Frankenstein of great ideas, but the stitching between each part is weak, so it falls apart. However, this is still a great track. It is ambitious. It is extremely fun. It is just rough in one area.
Despite the fact that it is unfair to compare a three track EP to the band's current greatest achievement, it is hard not to, or at least until LP3 is released. There is nothing downright terrible here; it just falls a little short on almost all aspects the band proved they were extremely proficient in. The darker tone is gone, the transitions are noticeably weaker, and there is a noticeable focus on more hook-laden yet generic choruses. Overall,
God Smiles Upon the Callous Daoboys is a good EP, but after
Celebrity Therapist, it is hard to deny that it is at least a little disappointing.
