Maleficium

Normally I best try to avoid mentioning Metal Archives or the current state of the website within my reviews as I like to ascertain that my reviews are more reminiscent of something you'd see in a magazine or newspaper or something of that nature—as that's how I read reviews growing up, but here I'd like to make an exception. So it seems Lorna Shore (the world's currently most-popular deathcore band) have finally made it onto the database of metal, a lot of the reviews and reception currently shown on their page really reminds me of classic Metallum from back when virtually every decently-popular deathcore band on the website would garner a barrage of shitty reviews by a herd of metal nerds - and that is exactly what seems to be happening here, the nostalgia really is rearing in.

I'm going to admit I actually don't like Lorna Shore, but when Maleficium came out I thought this band was pretty cool and promising, but unfortunately their deteriorating quality found on every album thereafter made my interest dwindle more and more as the years went on. This EP sounded really cool back in early 2014 when not a whole lot of cool sounds nor energy was really coming from the genre. Plus the band's premise which was merely that of just four young New Jersey kids simply just wanting to play heavy breakdown-laden music without giving much a fuck what anyone else thinks has something mildly captivating about it.

Speaking of breakdowns, a review of this EP cannot possibly be executed without talking about them. The band's tendency to admire the dotted crochet note is very evident in this EP, and by that I mean that open note chugs across all five songs are everywhere here. I don't mean that just merely as in the band simply just employs the use of breakdowns, but rather all of the tracks here are literally built around them. They're very abundant just with a fair amount of wankery and good riff ideas thrown in seemingly at random between all the chugging. As much as the songs sometimes come across as riff salad with the mandatory breakdowns typically inserted after every 20-to-40-second interval, they still somehow tend to make it sound good. Most bands of this genre that write songs like this are usually complete ass, but somehow Lorna Shore makes it work pretty well. Maybe it's because of the production, the decent vocalist or maybe all the little bells and whistles they include along the way but whatever it is, it effectively saves this EP from being as boring as the band's later works.

Opening song "Godmaker" begins with a pointlessly overly long intro that lasts over a minute before the song actually starts, I remember this track being the group's first real hit when the accompanying music video for it came out and it sums up their sound really well. The production is by no means unprofessional but also not overproduced. The drums, while obviously triggered, are not so high in the mix to take away from the atmosphere which was a big problem for me in this band's later material. As for guitars, there are some pretty decent riffs but the truth is that if you don't already like deathcore then this EP will not change your mind about this type of music at all, but I will say it's a bit applaudable that everything played here on guitar was done by sole guitarist Adam de Micco who somehow was even able to do the technical stuff live while the band still lacked a 2nd guitarist. Despite everything I explained there are some really cool memorable parts across this release, such as the final riff in "Godmaker" where the interesting use of pinch harmonics come into play behind the chugs and final blasting section or the two guitar solos in the title track.

In terms of subjective quality, Maleficium is slightly above average and it's based around a lot of post-djent era metalcore chugs, occasional tech death-esque weedle-deedles and really fat over-exaggerated, extensively-drawn-out breakdowns with a relatively good vocalist roaring/screaming over the whole resulting product, the latter two of which are both definitely this band's bread & butter. It's obvious that Tom Barber's vocals were crafted out of him doing his best Phil Bozeman impression as the growls seem emulate Bozeman, but unlike Bozeman's usual performance the scream/growl ratio here seems to be equal rather than the growls coming in more abundantly than the screams. The growls are good, however Barber's screams are pretty mid, they have a very rasp-quality to them that I'm not a very big fan of as my favorite type of deathcore screams mostly involve vocalists who can perform the most inhuman banshee shrieks possible (see: Mitch Lucker or Aaron Ketley of Postmortem Promises).

Despite that Maleficium will be a full decade-old in a year, I can kind of safely proclaim that this aged relatively well and it's still my favorite thing in the band's entire library of releases. It's evident that LS tried to make every song on this EP a little different, but ultimately the best bangers lie in the songs "Godmaker" and "Accumulatory Genophage" (the first and final tracks respectively). Despite that I'm not a fan of this band, I can safely say that I would much rather listen to this 20-minute EP any day over the overpolished "symphonic" trash they do now. Bear in mind, though, this type of music/this release is not at all for the types of folk who hate breakdowns - as there is still an absolute fuckton of them.