Review Summary: Believe me now, I’ll be left behind on that fabled day when the beggars will ride…
When you count among your biggest fans members of Converge, Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall, you’re probably doing something right when it comes to heavy music. So the question is: why has Only Living Witness’ influence on modern metal and hardcore been so sorely undervalued?
1993’s
Prone Mortal Form should’ve been a landmark moment for metal. Formed in the late ‘80s in Cambridge, Massachusetts around the core of vocalist Jonah Jenkins and drummer Daniel Stevenson, Only Living Witness’ sound is rooted in a now-de rigueur blend of thrash and East Coast hardcore. On their debut album, however, the band, joined by Craig Silverman and Chris Crowley on guitar and bass respectively, expand their sound to incorporate influences from groove metal, stoner rock, post-hardcore and grunge, crafting an sound that anticipated aspects of second-wave melodic metalcore while simultaneously remaining altogether inimitable, even three decades later.
Prone Mortal Form opens with its title track, establishing a mid-tempo stomp that almost begs to soundtrack a wrestling heel’s slow saunter into the ring, before sadistically teasing and torturing the riff through a series of rhythmic variations. Jonah Jenkins’ vocal approach, one of Only Living Witness’ calling cards, eschewed the traditional harsh vocals popular in hardcore and metal, instead sounding like a version of Kyuss’ John Garcia with his California cock rock swagger swapped out for a lip busted in a Boston bar fight. Jenkins’ vocals neither showboat, nor overpower the rest of the band, instead emerging from the din in a manner that, though not immediately catchy, provides the perfect staging ground for what should have been the sort of arena-ready chant-alongs one would hear at a Red Sox game. As his slow-moving melodies pace the soundstage like a caged tiger, listeners will make no mistake: Jenkins’ focus on clean vocals doesn’t make him sound any less dangerous — nor any less
pissed off.
Instrumentally, Only Living Witness lock in tighter than a container ship stuck in the Suez Canal. Silverman’s monstrous riffs, whether recalling the band’s primeval thrash on “Root” and “Twitching Tongues”, or executing the thousand-pound sledgehammer swing of “Voice of Disrepair”, indicate a reverent study at the altars of Iommi, Hetfield and Darrell, while Crowley’s bass booms and snaps like a cable coming off a suspension bridge.
Prone Mortal Form’s focus on groove means that guitar solos, where present, are often brief; but the stylistic choice to utilise lead playing as a textural tool rather than the focal point of the music, such as the solo break on the otherwise furious “Nineveh”, further centres the band’s philosophical commitment to songcraft over spectacle.
Without a doubt, though, the spotlight on
Prone Mortal Form is stolen by the late Stevenson’s drumming. Captivating without over-playing, Stevenson alternates a lead-footed bounce with lightning fast triplet fills; lending a writhing pulse to album highlight “Slug” that sounds for all the world like the death throes of an outsized gastropod doused in salt. So too, it is Stevenson’s playing that turns closer “December” into the behemoth that it is, taking a song centred around the incessant pounding sound of open power chords and turning it, from the tom rolls of the introduction to the punishing deluge of the final breakdown on which the album ends, into an unremitting aural headlock.
Prone Mortal Form is ten tracks and thirty-six minutes long. Discounting the two short acoustic instrumentals (no doubt intended to hint at the group’s broader musicality, but which provide limited mileage compared to more developed songs), and the album’s sole misstep (the two-minute VTA, which, though not a bad track, one comes off more like a youthful homage to Bad Religion than a sonically consistent inclusion) that’s seven tracks and thirty minutes of pure, unf
uckwithable groove.
Sure — Helmet and Prong may have had a similar commitment to making their riffs bounce like a lowrider on a gravel road; Life of Agony were also experimenting with executing hardcore with Danzig-inspired melodic vocals; and Alice In Chains were already delivering stripped-down heaviness with a focus on songcraft over spectacle. Prostrate yourself in reverence before
Prone Mortal Form, however, and you’ll realise that nobody, before nor since, has ever done it as good as the most egregious omission from metalcore’s oral history: Only Living Witness. Taken in that light, the chorus to
Prone Mortal Form’s title track seems to display an eerie prescience:
”Believe me now, I’ll be left behind on that fabled day when the beggars will ride…”
So when are we finally going to give Only Living Witness their dues?
