Review Summary: A impressive deathcore release held back by spotty vocals and obvious filler.
Deathcore. Probably one of the more oversaturated genres of our time, or at least at was until the bubble burst. Now, a lot of them are gone or switch over to a different genre with only a few of them left around. A lot of those bands are just retreading back and doing the same thing every other deathcore band does, making another overdone album that’s been done before and adding nothing to the stagnating genre.
Carthage is not of those bands. Carthage is a Baltimore based six-piece band founded by bedroom musician Tre Watson. They offer a type of progressive deathcore, a la Slice the Cake. “Salt the Earth,” their debut LP, offers many thing and uses many different genres to help support their deathcore sound. For the most part, it’s a wonderful cohesion of the death triage of deathcore, tech-death, and melodeath.
The Deathcore comes off the most prevalent, as there are a lot of chugging. However, that isn’t to say there aren’t any riffs here. Many of the riffs here are very good. The tech-death and melodeath influence a lot of them and really wouldn’t feel out of place on records of that genre. Of course, that isn’t to say some of them aren’t generic. A few of the riffs here really aren’t worth noting at here and just there to fill space. Also, the breakdown in the acoustic song is hilarious.
The rhythm section forms a very tight groove throughout most of the track. The bass is very noticeable on some songs, which is worthy of attention. They are very technical for a deathcore band. The drums back-up the music well and kepps the tempo well, while offering some good fills and some technical sections.
The vocals, done by Eric Hendricks, are very well done as he delivers some really crushing lows and screeching highs harsh vocals. Backing him up are Tre and Noyan “last name I don’t want to type,” who deliver some clean vocals in songs that accentuate the growls. The only real problem is that the production sometimes leaves the backing vocals overwhelm by the lead vocals and a bit hard to hear at times. Also the speaking vocals done every now and then are, well, unintentionally hilarious.
Of course, some of the songs as a whole really don’t work well. ‘Exegentics’ is mostly a filler song with nothing to offer while ‘Destroy the City’ is mostly nothing but a chugfest. It just seems like they made songs to make a LP instead of another EP, which could also explain the inclusion of a acoustic track of ‘Pushing Forward.’ To give it credit, it is better than the nonacoutic version, since the vocals are much less hilarious than before
Overall, it’s a very impressive album held back by some production issues on the vocals, hilarious spoken word vocals, and some obvious filler tracks. It’s definitely worthy of your attention and should check it out, as it’s obviously one of the better Deathcore releases of 2012.
