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.

The Chicago based deathcore band BORN OF OSIRIS had quite the difficult time choosing a name as in a mere short period from 2003- 07 they chose and rejected the names Diminished, Your Heart Engraved and Rosecrance before finally settling on the Egyptian deity who was the Egyptian god of the afterlife. During that time they produced a few demos under all those names but wouldn't release their debut studio EP - THE NEW REIGN until 2007 as BORN OF OSIRIS. Although the band started out more as a metalcore outfit they began adding more death metal elements such as the abrasive growled vocals as well as the expected rhythmic breakdowns more suited to the death metal scene however all those core elements are retained. This band somehow latched onto the progressive world as it seems to pop up as such although the progressive touches take a back seat to the brutal metal aspects in the forefront.

BORN OF OSIRIS deliver a typical death metal meets metal ore = deathcore sound with the expected death metal riffs and blast beats while retaining all those core breakdowns with all the hardcore punk infused energy and brutality, however what sets this band apart from the rest of the pack is that it utilizes atmospheric keyboards to create a backdrop of ambience and also throws in a few unorthodox sound effects on the side. Ronnie Canizaro's vocals are nothing out of the ordinary nor are the staccato riffs of Lee McKinney however Matthew Pantelis dishes out some melodic lead guitar parts along with squeals and little tricks and trinkets to add a sprinkling of more class metal to the mix including a few solos here and there.

The percussion seems to be the weakest part as i'm not hearing the OMG drum abuse i would expect for a deathcore band, or at least not to the extend that i would prefer. Yeah, there are blast beats now and again but generally the percussive parts are fairly by the books and not overly exciting. Overall the tracks are all fairly similar with only the keyboards and lead guitar differentiating them in any significant ways. Deathcore is certainly not my favorite subgenre in the metal universe and BORN OF OSIRIS doesn't dish out a whole lot of originality to make me change my mind on that one. This debut is a nicely delivered near 22 minute display of metal energy with some atmospheric elements thrown in but in the end it's all fairly predictable and doesn't even come close to blowing me away.