Senseless Order

Signs of the Swarm seemed to come out of nowhere. They had no demo material, no initial EP like most other deathcore bands, so their debut album Senseless Order went under the radar. The band didn't achieve much recognition until the release of their music video for "Cesspool of Ignorance" the year following this album's release - that video now having amassed millions of views, securing SOTS's place as a well-known and on-the-rise band.

However, Senseless Order isn't talked about much due to the focus of their fanbase being directed at their follow-up album, The Disfigurement of Existence. This may lead some to view the debut as a 'diamond in the rocks'. It's certainly an album which piques interest and has worth in giving a listen, but is by no stretch a hidden gem. Senseless Order is what you'd expect from a typical deathcore band's debut release - straightforward, heavy, and aggressive yet has many lull moments and feels the need to shine a bit more in many areas.

We're supposedly talking about 'slamming deathcore' here, however this still isn't quite what you'd expect, even with a label as strict and stigmatic as such. Senseless Order definitely takes a shade of influence from brutal death metal and slam, but manages to lean more towards the deathcore side of things, more so than Vulvodynia or Whoretopsy. The good majority of riffing on the album is done on the lower-end of drop-tuned guitars, with tremolo-picked chromatic riffs and chunky breakdowns. Here and there you might find a lead guitar, but not really in any sense technical, and definitely no solos. Most of this lead work takes the form of dissonant, atmospheric overlay for the breakdown riffs. A few riffs might stand out to some, such as the melodic riff in "Mouth Sewn Prophets" which occurs awkwardly at the song's midway.

But in contrast to the album's lack of variety, Senseless Order achieves exactly what it intends to do: be heavy as all hell. The low-end of this album is mixed obnoxiously loud, accentuating bass drops and an overload of double-kick drums. Imagine if you took any Infant Annihilator song, slowed down the riffs and kept the drums at full speed. The result would be any given song on this album.

The one exception to the album's formulaic, at times monotonous, method of delivering heavy-as-possible deathcore is "Hour of Abhorrence" which takes a breather and introduces very brief, eerie clean guitars with lots of reverb.

The one key card the band holds in their arsenal is the extreme gutturals of (ex-)vocalist CJ McCreery. Without a doubt, CJ is an incredibly skilled vocalist, whose vocal style of gurgly, indecipherable gutturals combined with piercing tunnel throat screams match up flawlessly with the instruments.

Is this a bad album? No, not necessarily. It's without a doubt repetitive, yet seriously brutal deathcore that shows a band with potential. However, for anyone interested in Signs of the Swarm, my go-to recommendation would be The Disfigurement of Existence.