Assimilated Deformation

We all know that a deathcore album cannot be reviewed without first acknowledging how despised the genre is. Yes, we all know how deathcore is the most hated metal genre, blah blah we get it. It's been heavily discussed how "shit" this genre is for the last 10 years. But can you really blame anyone for saying it? I personally love the genre (when done right), but just why is deathcore so hated?

I'll answer that here: because it’s bad, it’s just fucking terrible. The music consistently wields a misogynistic tone, the bands who craft songs in this genre generally have very little substance and very seldom do you ever find deathcore musicians that strive to push the boundaries of their genre into new categories. It’s all the same shit, over and over again. However, when you do happen to discover a deathcore group that happens to pursue pushing the boundaries and making things at least a little different, you get some of deathcore's most mindblowing acts which all serve as hidden gems such as The Juliet Massacre, All Shall Perish, See You Next Tuesday, At Rest, The Partisan Turbine and (my most recent discovery) The Grieving Process.
This is a band that happens to do a okay job as breaking the mold of deathcore clichés and also crafts a formula so unadulterated, but knocks your dick in the dirt with its heavyness at the same time.

Deathcore usually comes as three different breeds, those three usually are the following:
1) metalcore bands trying to play death metal (i.e. Suicide Silence or We Are the End)
2) death metal bands with metalcore influences (i.e. Despised Icon and Carnifex)
3) chuggy death metal with hardcore influences (i.e. The Acacia Strain and Die Like Kidd)

What The Grieving Process happens to do is not only escape the formulaic approach of the three selections above, but they also happen to not sound too out-of-the-ordinary doing it. TGP play a style that can be best described as this: a metalcore band that draws heavily on technical brutal death metal with some beatdown hardcore influence thrown in as well. For instance: the band's breakdowns resemble something more of brutal death's or beatdown's slam riff style than the typical chugga-chugga breakdown of metalcore and deathcore. Not only that, but if you really can believe it, this band has riffs. I know what you're thinking "A DEATHCORE BAND THAT HAS RIFFS?!??" yes, shocker to believe that these guys don't outright rely on breakdowns like most of their peers in the genre, but you have to hear it to believe it. The breakdowns are actually kinda scarce in their songs, limiting to only one breakdown a song or sometimes none at all (the track "Home Movies" doesn't contain a single breakdown) thus proving these guys prefer to actually craft songs with riffs in mind first, and breakdowns second; which is the polar opposite of most peer bands.

Speaking of their riffs, I am actually kind of surprised how often their riffs happen to remind me of brutal death metal, a lot of these riffs bring bands like Incarnate and Lividity to mind, just played in deathcore tuning of course. The intricacy of the riffs are also pretty impressive as well, time signature shifts and crazy technicality are present in every track and each track is a little different from the last. The musicianship is a little stunning.

Guess the last things to talk about are the drums and vocals. Not much to talk about or complain about either factor. Drumming is nice, especially because you can easily tell the drums aren't triggered to shit, nor are they a drum machine either. I always appreciate a metal album with a real drummer. His snare tone is maybe a slight ping-less from getting into the 'brutal snare' territory of typical slam bands, but still a nice tone.

Lastly, the vocals aren't too impressive, but not bad either. The vocalist happens to just perform the regular scream/growl alternation of the stereotypical deathcore vocalist (e.g. "roarrrr I will death metal growllllll heeeerrrre" / "REAAAARRRRR AND I WILLLLL SCREEEAAAM HEEERRE"). His growl tends to remind me of the growl vocals of bands like Whisteria Cottage or And Hell Followed With while his scream is reminiscent of Elysia's vocalist.

Assimilated Deformation is an absolute blockbuster of a deathcore release, it is so ungodly underrated and I am deeply saddened that The Grieving Process didn't make the heavy-hitter ranks of the 1st deathcore wave back during MySpace. However, it's never too late to listen to music, and with that said I urge anyone (whether you hate deathcore or love it) to check this album out. It has brutal riffs, it has brutal breakdowns, it has just about anything you'd want in a brutal album.