Review Summary: Okay, you’re vegan, we get it…
Ahhh, deathcore; showing face in the present day once again like the punchline to a joke no one wanted to hear. We could’ve left the smouldering carcass embers to be reclaimed by the musical landscape around it, but noooooo. Whether through nostalgia, poor taste or just general laziness, the genre resurgence is still ongoing, and judging by this album, it’s also following the same lifecycle as its predecessors.
Director’s Cuts was one of the most entertainingly lurid and outright nutty deathcore releases to emerge since the genre’s neon hair and skinny jeans heyday, not only full of diverting musical novelties, but possessive of a topical focus that was backed up by the indignant rage of the music. It tipped the hat and bowed very deeply to accepted deathcore tropes of course, but not without establishing its own distinct brand of unfettered hostility along the way. By comparison,
Everybody’s A Murderer is the exact opposite. It takes the standard deathcore tropes, but makes no attempt to subvert, adapt or individualise them to make them the band’s own, and the socially-conscious focus now feels weakly reinforced by the somewhat standard songwriting. If
Director’s Cuts was a thrilling steel rollercoaster ride,
Everybody’s A Murderer is a twenty year old ghost train tucked away in the back corner of the Deathcore Theme Park (TM). There’s entertainment value there, but it feels dated, unsurprising and in desperate need of an overhaul.
The record is a grab bag of noughties deathcore standards done relatively well, but with very little that would stand out as ‘above average’ even in that era. Chugalugging, pig squeals and breakdowns dominate the landscape, and it all feels satisfyingly heavy and nasty. It also comes across as incredibly derivative, with tracks like ‘Burn Your Local Butcher’ and ‘Vegan Day Of Violence’ being incredibly by-numbers excursions despite the conviction of their ideals. The simplicity of the cuts, whilst occasionally vicious, do not feel dynamic enough to transmit the band’s message as pointedly as on their previous album, with everything having a plodding, lurching pace that doesn’t inspire a great deal of attention beyond the, ‘yo, this is kinda heavy…’ acknowledgment. The best moments on the album occur when genre conventions are run through with some degree of urgency, ‘Eight Four One Six’ being a good example. It riffs hard, has meaty, brutalising beatdowns and follows in the footsteps of ‘High-Impact’ by recruiting a female vocalist, Sophie Wilcher, to contribute to the chorus. It synchronises well, and the selection has all the elements of a solid deathcore track. Similarly, ‘A Body For A Body’, despite its more typical sound, manages to be compelling thanks to the transitions between sections within the song that keep it interesting. It does feel a little too disparate and awkwardly stitched together, but at the very least is able to retain attention, unlike many surrounding picks that seem to be built around their breakdowns.
*a call overheard in the Breakdown Department at Deathcore PLC.*
’To The Grave want what? Junz? Well, how many?…. How many is ‘a lot’? Oh come on, that’s just silly…… okay fine, whatever. How many times? …..WHAT?! Across how many songs??….. how long’s the record? See, this kind of foolishness is why no one respects deathcore! This is way above my paygrade, I’m going to transfer you to my manager, please hold. *BEEP*
These f*cking vegans man, I swear to God…’
Speaking of breakdowns, do you like them heavy but as bland as a bowlful of tofu? If the answer is yes, I’d first question your sanity, and then wholeheartedly recommend this album. They’re all super chunky, and bolstered by the ridiculously clean-then-dirty-and-back-again production style the band has been slathering over their recent output, although it does seem less egregious here mostly due to the simplicity of the writing. Proficient they may be, and reasonably impactful in their brutality, but they can’t help but be underwhelming in their execution, particularly when contrasted with the band’s groovy, pugnacious best beatdowns. There are a few solos, such as on ‘Dead Wrong’ that mix up the proceedings a little, but so fleeting is the effect and so in the shadow of the breakdown that immediately follows, it seems like such a token inclusion. Interlude ‘Gaschamber PT’ and penultimate number ‘Terrormilitary’ are the only songs that foster any sense of atmosphere, with the latter’s sparsity and vaguely post-metal riffing memorable for this exact reason. It’s a competent track, but so built into the body of
Director’s Cuts was the atmosphere that to have such moments relegated to just two cuts is incredibly soulless and wasteful, never mind ill-fitting for an album with such meaningful messages to express.
With its provocative title and album art the LP immediately appears geared up to make the same statements as its predecessor. The lyrical content focuses on similar activist conceits, even if it is a little more nebulous overall, in addition to being far more concerned with portrayals of generalised carnage. It’s furious, profane, extremely gruesome and inflammatory. Nonetheless, the underlying messages are certainly relevant in the modern climate, so the band deserves some credit for once again building an album that revolves around pressing global issues rather than just sensationalism. Unfortunately, there isn’t nearly the same amount of audacious gusto present on this record to allow the message to transmit effectively. There’s very few moments of genuine resonance, with ‘Made In Aus’’s use of audio excerpts and the
All your friends are dead outro being perhaps the only parts that really get a leg-up. Even then, these instances are all but undone by such clips as ‘DxE Or Die’’s
To the grave motherf*cker! silliness, which really undermine the core of the album’s focus. Vocally, though, the release is monstrously heavy, with Dane Evans’ delivery as diverse and bludgeoning as ever; a standout aspect of variety on an album that is simply too devoid of it elsewhere. The final two songs showcase his entire stylistic range brilliantly well, and are probably the best snapshot of the LP’s superior elements overall, condensed into an 8-minute one-two punch.
Even the squintiest of glances directed at To The Grave’s previous releases reveal a band with a consistently fast-developing sound, so it’s extremely disappointing to see this reductive noughties deathcore-standard regression is the direction they have opted for. The entire record is ‘Cut Off The Head’ repeated 10 ways, and whilst that particular track worked in context on
Director’s Cuts because of how distinctive it was from the rest of the material, here the aesthetic outstays its welcome very quickly. The collection retains the impactful substance of the topicality, albeit in a slightly more puerile way, but lacks the insane methodology required to convey it effectively, like an animal rights campaign minus the candid, shocking imagery to grab the attention of a passerby. As a result, the effect is less indignant, righteous anger and more of a tutting head-shake. There’s definitely still some moments of heated vitriol that stir up the blood fairly admirably, but the lack of dynamism and devilishly varied intensity hurt the experience massively, ultimately creating a competent but underwhelming metal album that makes its points in the most unmemorable of ways.
