Review Summary: Another deathcore band making good music but with much more potential than exhibited in this album.
A Breath Before Surfacing is going to draw a lot of comparisons to Job For A Cowboy. They both play in the same genre of music, are from Arizona, and JFAC are mentioned in A Breath Before Surfacing's press materials as a similar band. The odd thing about this is the fact that the bands may look similar on paper but with even one listen, the listener would be able to pick out many differences between the two bands.
Death Is Swallowed In Victory is prototypical deathcore. You'll hear the standard galloping riffs, blast beats, squealing guitars and of course the requisite breakdowns. The songs are technically sound and well played, but tend to blend into each other. I found it difficult to find too much else to say as the band seems to be yet another band with great potential, plagued to the routines of stereotypical deathcore.
Right off the bat, the listener hears a typical deathcore riff, before being thrown straight into the machine gun drumming that is so typical inside the genre. The vocalist however is very talented at what he does. Though his screams are nothing we haven't all heard before, they are crisp and consistant. At about a minute thirty into the first song we hear some very well done guitar work, comparable to that you would hear in protest the hero or between the buried and me. This gave me enough hope to listen to the rest of the album and in hindsight, it wasn't too bad. All instruments are up to par throughout the whole album and the breakdowns are not nearly as obvious and generic as they are in other deathcore bands. The track that really stands out is called "Ray Road" and has a quiet guitar section that can make the whole album worth the purchase. Thankfully it doesen't lead into clean vocals that I was expecting. The guitar solo in this song is very well done and fits the song perfectly.
A short review simply because the album can really be summed up in a few sentences. If one was trying to find a good deathcore band to get into, A Breath Before Surfacing would probably be their best bet.
Recommended tracks:
-Cosmetic Abomination
-Ray Road
