Review Summary: Death metal, hardcore and some pretty high profile guest spots.
Pairing the brutal vocals of death metal with the blistering intensity and raw emotion of hardcore is something more bands should try and do… correctly. While in the last few years bands have been mixing death metal with hardcore/metalcore to mixed results, Day of Mourning proved that it can be done right, years before other bands even began attempting it. Featuring a couple of legendary guest vocal appearances, Your Future’s End is a hardcore record that should not go unnoticed.
From the roar of the piercing feedback opening “Iconoclast” Your Future’s End pummels the listener incessantly with ferocious death metal growls and hardcore battering. The overall sound is akin to your favorite Holy Terror artists (Integrity, Ringworm, Disembodied, Bloodlet), but the vocals are something new. Not as outright inhuman as Lord Worm, you won’t mistake anything on this record for Scott Vogel. There aren’t any pig squeals or ridiculous gutturals, just deep bellowing with the (very) occasional high thrown in. This might not sound like anything special now, but at the time, 10+ years ago, no one was doing this.
The downtuned guitars trudge through the five songs (the first song is anti-christianity talk over noise) at a fairly up-tempo pace. Nothing on the album gets quite up to death metal speed and there are still plenty of mosh parts. In between the chunky, chug-filled riffs, there are a few nice Gothenburg style leads. Plenty of feedback washes over the listener throughout the album and proves an effective build up to what comes next. The drummer plays mainly hardcore inspired beats with the occasional double bass pedal burst here and there. The bass goes relatively unnoticed, barring a few occasions. An effective sliding style is used during “Demons Who Wear the Same Face” making the moment that much more chaotic.
“Demons Who Wear the Same Face” also boasts the first guest appearance on the record by none other than Dwid Hellion of Integrity fame. His unmistakable voice tears through adding a wonderful dynamic in the song. The second guest vocalist appears during “Enemy of Angels” by Ringworm frontman The Human Furnace. In both cases, the addition of guest vocals works well with the song and don’t sound like an afterthought, as is most often the case.
Fans of more modern deathcore such as All Shall Perish or Despised Icon may be let down by a more hardcore feel of this album, but it shouldn’t deter those folks from checking out a pioneering album in the genre. Deathcore is most likely a passing trend, though this album should stand the test of time as an excellent combination of death metal’s brutality and hardcore’s heartfelt delivery.
