Review Summary: Mixing Emmure and late Glass Cloud turns out to be like mixing milk with skim milk.
You might be surprised to find out that the person who wrote songs like "Bring A Gun To School" and "Girls Don't Like Boys, Girls Like 40's And Blunts" might not have been the biggest pleasure to work with behind the scenes. This was confirmed when in late 2015, every single member sans Frankie Palmeri left Emmure and in 2014 Ben Lionetti, their founding rhythm guitarist called Frankie “a disgusting human being”.
Nevertheless, Frankie assembled a new lineup and Emmure presses on – much to the metal world’s disdain. However, interest was peaked when the members were revealed to be from Glass Cloud and the single “Torch” dropped. It was definitely an improvement from much of the trash that littered their last album – was Emmure gonna bounce back to (at least) the decency that was “Slave to the Game” and “Goodbye to the Gallows?”
Well, almost.
The biggest positive right from the get-go is that the album is a lot shorter this time – only 31 minutes compared to Eternal Enemies’ extremely bloated 44 minutes. The album begins similarily to how nearly all their albums start – with a song that’s little more than a glorified breakdown. “Get the f
uck up! / Gahh! / Blerghhh! Move!” No doubt that took a long time to come up with.
The third track “Smokey” doesn’t really feature much more than the breakdown either, although it does have better lyrics and generally hits a lot harder – it would be preferable if this was the opener for the album and “You Asked For It” was just discarded.
“Shinjuku Masterlord”, as the first real song, reminds me why I disliked the previous Emmure album in the first place. It could fit right there too – it features a middling riff, along with some embarrassing white boy rap lines. The only real difference is a lower tuning. “Flag of the Beast” is much the same, just chuck in some lyrics that Corey Taylor could have written for earlier Slipknot albums.
However, “Natural Born Killer” is instantly explosive, with groovy throttling riffs and beats. It gives you a bit of hope for the record – that is, until it is sadly soiled halfway through by Frankie’s rapping. If it wasn’t for that, it would be easily the best song on the album. In the end that honor has to go to “Russian Hotel Aftermath”. Everything about it sounds pained and it all comes to head during the climax where the breakdowns actually seem to signal a descend into a madness and self-hatred. You could say it’s almost deathcore’s answer to Kendrick Lamar’s “u”.
Unfortunately, most of the songs are honestly pretty forgettable, just more of the usual Emmure. “Ice Man Confessions” is a little more experimental, evoking a sense of forboding and feels like it actually has some progression. The shorter songs like “Major Key Alert” and “Derelict” on here are complete throwaways, more interludes than anything. The biggest surprise here is the usage of clean vocals on “Turtle in a Hare Machine”. They work surprisingly well, so it’s a shame that they aren’t used more often instead of Frankie’s usual grating styles.
If you expected to hear more Glass Cloud influence on this, you’ll be disappointed. The best you’ll get is more djent-inspired riffs similar to that from Perfect War Forever. The instrumentation overall has definitely improved, but not throughout the entire album. Too many throwaways sour the experience, and I can’t help but feel like with more time this could have been a pretty damn good album.
If you really got a fixin’ for more Emmure, just pretend this album is an EP and make a playlist of:
-Smokey
-Natural Born Killer
-Ice Man Confessions
-Russian Hotel Aftermath
-Turtle in a Hare Machine
-Torch
