Shadow of the Colossus

Sweet Moses, what do we have here? A deathcore band? Named after one of my favorite video games ever made? Not only that, but it's really good deathcore at that. Shadow of the Colossus is a four-piece composing of four of the five members that made up the deathcore band Fate. But unlike Fate, we see here a much more slammy style in this one. While Fate could easily be lain among the likes of bands such as Carnifex, Postmortem Promises, and And Hell Followed With, Shadow of the Colossus sounds more like a hybrid between Slice the Cake and The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza. The riffs are crushing, the vocals are insane and the drumming is better than before. Jacob Durrett, I believe, is best noted for his skinswork in Molotov Solution, but here he's just insane. His double bass is crazy and his snare blasts are orgasmic.

A lot of Bryce Yuson's guitar work follows through with chuggy rhythms and with leads taking up all the fun. He's the only guitarist for the band, so nearly 90% of the time guitars are dual-tracked with his rhythm and leads, and even sometimes with triple tracking, giving the vision of three guitarists at once. But is his playing good? He's not a bad guitarist, I can say that much. While his slams are great, he sometimes gets uncreative with his playing, making too many songs at the same tempo or even blending in with each other. He can harmonize very well and is evident of what he does on "Labor, the Enslaver", "Shrine of Worship", and the appropriately-titled "Instrumental", where he truly shows his skills off. His solos are also fairly above-average, taking note of his guitar solo performance in tracks such as "The Grove" and "The Prophecy". In songs such as "Serve the Death Sentence" and "Purgatory of Eternal Suffering", he and the rest of the band pull an entirely new approach all together, ditching the moderate tempos and going faster than a bat out of hell. Perfect music for taking down that damn colossi you've been stuck on for the past week.

As for the vocals, this is something I really want to lie my words on. Drew Winters has improved a fuck of a lot since his days in Fate. If this album was released just a few years later and I swear it would have at least twice the hype just because of his voice. His vocals rank in within the boundaries of vocalists such as Storm Strope (of The Last Ten Seconds of Life) and Dan Watson (of Infant Annihilator, formerly of Betrayer). His growls are just about as good as his screams and that's saying something since most deathcore vocalists only are good at one or the other more times than not. Sometimes his lyrics are actually understandable too among all the booming riffs and flaring drums around him. If I could give anyone one song to make him stand out the most, I would definitely recommend "The Grove" over any other song here in terms of his growling/screaming range.

Now if I could talk about bass I would, but unfortunately I couldn't hear a single note from the bass guitar on this entire album other than just a few seconds during a bass break on the final track, which deducts some of the score away that I would have gave it. Believe me, this is a great release, but some more audible bass guitar and more adventurous songwriting would have helped the journey through the Forbidden Land.

All in all, it's a brutal, extreme metal effort being driven by intuitive guitar work, insane drumming, and vocals. Now if only Wander could have played Mono this album at full blast, she would have probably shot right up in an instant.