THE NEW REIGN

Though deathcore is admittedly not one of my favorite genres, American flag-bearers Born of Osiris have been one of my favorite discoveries this year. Their progressive and technical take on this now-tired mix of death metal and metalcore is refreshing, and their gifted capabilities as songwriters and musicians makes them even more noteworthy in my book. Looking back on The New Reign (their first EP under the band name Born of Osiris) from today's lenses shows that they didn't start out as an eye-opening act, however - while the band's distinct sound is somewhat in place, it's much more immature and disjointed than any of their future efforts. The New Reign is a fairly mediocre effort that relies far too heavily on conventional deathcore techniques for my liking, and when it does deviate from this well-trodden formula, the results are hit and miss.

The music you'll find on The New Reign is best described as deathcore with quite a few technical and melodic twists. There are lots of technical nuances in the compositions, especially in the guitar department, and the synthesizer flavorings give Born of Osiris a few unique assets aside from your standard 'chug-chug-breakdown' deathcore album. While this is definitely a positive in my book, Born of Osiris was still far from perfecting their sound on this EP - the synthesizer tones sound cheap and fake, and they tend to awkwardly dance above the rest of the tech-metal madness with no rhyme or reason. To further add to this, the songs themselves often jump from one section to another without any warning; in short, this is an extremely incoherent and jagged release from a compositional standpoint. The musicianship is undoubtedly excellent, with the lightning-fast guitar leads and complex drum patterns often leaving me in amazement, but the songs are just so disjointed that it's difficult to get too excited about The New Reign.

It's also worth noting that the production is not quite up to par either, with the dry and rather muddy sound often detracting from my overall enjoyment. All in all, The New Reign is not an EP I enjoy very much, but there are still plenty of ambitious ideas throughout its duration to save it from being considered a poor effort. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone except those who can't get enough of Born of Osiris, so I guess 2.5 is a pretty fair score. Time would prove that these lads would improve immensely over this disjointed debut within the next few years.