Fact, the Germans love their metalcore but not all of them are ‘Architects Of Perfection’ at their craft. Sorry for the crass opening line but through the years I have suffered some real dross as bands go about flogging that dead horse and sometimes it really makes you forget that there can actually be a good album nestling amongst a slew of bland bandwagon jumpers. So I decided to give 6 Reasons To Kill a chance for a few reasons, one; it was my turn at doing a couple from the genre, two; I remember their last Bastardised release ‘Another Horizon’ and also the fact they had done a split with Deadlock in the past, so they couldn’t be that bad and three; there is a zombie on the cover of this new one. Yeah I would have probably gone with it just because of the zombie but that’s beside the point.
Luckily I was not disappointed as from the second ‘Welcome To Forever’ batters in all guns blazing it is evident this is going to be an in your face and dynamic listening experience. The drumming is instantly impressive and you can also tell that the production here is extremely formidable and bruising. Vocalist Torsten dishes out some feral high yaps and lower beastly growls, there is also some (what I call) donkey ‘breeeeees’ which always make me laugh but are only used sparingly making their impact count all the more. There are a couple of underlying keyboard swirls and an acoustic intro with spoken word part adding moody atmosphere as we go into the downbeat ‘My Bitterness’ keeping this inventive and stopping the staleness setting in. By now I am also banging my head and pummelling my fists as this is really hitting the mark. There is a rampant melody flowing, in fact the backing tune on this one reminds a little of Dark Tranquillity and then a crunching beatdown makes me want start spinning in a circle round the living room. ‘False Absolution’ is a bastard monster of a track with some cascading fretwork coursing through it and a really powerful wrecking ball mindset that flattens everything.
The band try to show off their sensitive side with some clean crooning on ‘Your Poison’ and on the whole it works with the singer coming off genuine and heartfelt rather than a whining emo brat. It strikes as a bold move as this song is the album ballad and you don’t often find those in this sort of music. ‘Day Of The Apocalypse’ puts the bite back on, could this be the zombies again and the gloriously entitled ‘Scum Belongs To Scum’ grinds and bounces away leaving you wondering if this moment of sensitivity was all a dream. ‘As Buried To The Sea’ goes for a choppy chug and the album bruises its way to finality I have to admit I cannot really find anything to fault about this. If I had made a New Years Resolution to enjoy metalcore I would never have expected to keep it so this really has come as a surprise, shame I didn’t get any vests for Xmas!
http://www.myspace.com/sixreasonstokill
