The Well

And Hell Followed With is probably up there with being one of my favorite deathcore bands of all time, the other one being The Red Shore. Proprioception in particular is one of the most infectious albums within the genre. Everything about the guitar work especially is magnificent. And oh my GOD that tone!

These guys have had a pretty interesting comeback as of recently. When I first heard of their reunion I was excited for new music bringing back some flavor and introspection to the deathcore genre. However, what we got from the last EP was absolute disappointment. It goes to show that no matter how much you want some of your favorite OG's within a genre to return, it's probably for the best that they stay dead within the current market of the genre that they were a part of.

So, with such a weird comeback that really did the band a disservice and also replacing vocalists, will this brand new single from the band finally return to it's roots? Uhhhhh not exactly.

There's a lot of definite callbacks to the Proprioception sound within the guitar work, like the final leg of the track after this slam riff (I will get into this part much later) where the riffs go headfirst into melodic death metal territory. It's definitely nice to hear a return to this kind of music that takes inspiration from At The Gates and Dark Tranquility because let's face it; the genre has been needing some sort of true revival to older forms. The drum work too is pretty good even if for some reason the drums sound insanely compressed and flat. Triggers galore as well. Kind of a weird choice considering how raw the drums used to sound.

Now, you might look at what I just said and think "well then maybe they went back to what made them great". You WOULD be right, except despite this, they somehow managed to take a steaming shit all over what made them great. The song starts off with some riffs that feel like they were taken right out of the last EP. Boring and unimaginative. I don't understand why deathcore bands feel the need to do this incredibly slow burn build up into the actual song when it's been so overdone and it's not interesting in the slightest. Doesn't help that the guitars stop for a second to introduce this absolutely insane grinding bass riff that sounds just as compressed as the rest of the track.

The new vocalist actually does a fair job bringing back some of the inflections from how Nick used to sound. Most of the time though, he's belting out the lyrics in such a flat manner that doesn't bring a lot of flair to the song. And when he decides to get wild, it's some of the worst shit I've probably heard from a band that I love to death.

Halfway through the song we get to the tracks main problem; the slam riff. This entire portion of the song starts with the riff building and immediately gets worse as it goes on. Doesn't help that Dan Tucker's gutturals sound insanely one note. Cool dude, you can do gutturals I guess? Then right after the droning is done we get probably the most laughably bad part of the entire song, Duncan fucking Bentley. This prick decides right after Dan's verse to do some of the worst shit in modern deathcore in the form of a mosh call. Then when his verse starts he's got the same exact douchey vocals you've heard him do on nearly every Vulvodynia song. Luckily this part goes back into the melodic death metal riffing that I mentioned earlier in the review that actually makes this song tolerable.

I really don't know what happened. And Hell Followed With never struck me as the type of band to go in this kind of douchey pseudo-macho brocore direction with the flat breakdowns and the mosh calls. It feels so forced all around and feels like a cash in if anything to try and win back old fans who weren't fucking with the EP. I'm genuinely hoping that whatever they decide to do in the future is much better than whatever this was. Hopefully they'll take my advice.

Overall, stay away from this. It'll save your ears.

Final score: 20/100