TERMINATE DAMNATION

Where I live in my generation, you either listen to mainstream pop hip hop, or extreme metal of all sorts, with very little in between. I was given terminate damnation by a friend in the extreme metal category with a bunch of other modern hardcore albums. This was the only one I liked! The instrumentation is smart, the vocals aren't overly prominent, and the hardcore attitude is completely embedded in every fiber of their music.

Hardcore is usually music played by a bunch of twenty somethings for a bunch of teenagers who want bone crushing music, and 90% of the time it's too out of control, anger for the sake of anger for me, but Becoming the archetype s a little different. I really cant find anything that's sets them apart from most other hardcore bands, except the fact that they really touch me. Their not super technical, they aren't super flambuoyant (like most tech and classic prog metal), they're one of a kind.

On terminate damnation you will go from old school march of the dead organ pieces, straight up metal core, death metal, and seven minute piano interludes... and it's all well executed. I think this group really has a metalcore edge over bands like Between the buried and me simply because you don't have the vocals constantly spitting at you with no end, the vocalist knows when to shut up when it's appropriate, and just let the music play. A very rare trait inside all the core movements. The guitars are tuned to drop C, so you get a very heavy dose of heavy, and most of the time their off doing crazy lead lines together. The drumming isn't Mike Portney pretentious thank God, once again a trait rarely sen in this kind of music. The song compositions are typical of extreme metal, stars heavy, a couple of versus, breakdown, build up end sadly a little too typical, good thing there are songs like elegy to brake up the monotony.

While we're on the subject, Elegy is easily the best song, starting with some incredibly deep grunts, and a sick lead line that will carry on to the LOOONG piano solo, then at the end of the piano hell will break loose again and the triumphant end will come. A great song, and a good representative of their style of hard/metalcore. Four stars.

(you can imagine how disapointed I was with their next album)