Yōkai

If there is one credit that should be given to the 2010s, its that they threw the mutually combined 'heavy music' scene (that's hard rock, heavy metal and hardcore all in one tree) into an almost parody like level of uh... exploration.

Japan hyper developed its "over the top gimmicky pop metal" scene to a T with the likes of Babymetal, Iron Bunny and Band Maid, America then spat out its own industrial tinged variant with Poppy. Then the trap rappers started ripping on deathcore bands, then trap metal became a thing and those trap rappers started making black metal side projects... and then Within Destruction forced their way in with Yokai. So lets make sure I'm not mincing my own words here, I do not like this album, this music is not for me, but I also have the strangest level of respect for it, because running from slamming deathcore straight to this without even the slightest hint of hesitation is perhaps the ballsiest move in metal, like if you were to cut the bulk of 90's era Megadeth and immediately follow up Rust in Peace with Risk.

My first issue is a pretty common issue I have with modern deathcore, the production is just too damn clean. You could replace some of the guitar lines with dubstep wub wub bass drops and I'm not sure I'd even notice a difference. Its great that everything is downtuned and I certainly like that filled out low end especially with the lack of a bass guitar, but I kinda feel like a rawer guitar tone would have been necessary to actually give it any muscle. It does fit well with some of the trap elements that are introduced here but brings up what might be the most common grievance against this album, which is that the metal seems to be taking the back seat while making up the bulk of the album. Case in point, after the obligatory intro track titled Yomi (which in fairness is a digital hip hop beat with some folk japanese instrumentation laid on top) you're hit with the title track which does feature an electronic opening but quickly gives way to a core sound of double pedal drumming, chuggy guitar grooves and slam styled low guttural vocals. Not just one, but two fairly lengthy solos and gang shouted vocals follow on the tail end. This is what the bulk of the album sounds like. Sure its follow up with Harakiri which does have a break in it which features a rap verse over a swishy trap beat, but the bulk of this song follows the pattern of the first, chuggy guitar grooves, double pedal drumming and low guttural vocals with some gang shouts blended in near the end.

At its heart and core its still very much a deathcore album just given some synthy melodies that backtrack the whole thing and occasionally having an anime girl sounding voice yell out japanese words before breakdowns. Yes it has the trap sound but that sound comprises I would argue maybe 10% of the album's whole sound, like the rap bit in Harakiri is just one quick verse taking maybe 30 seconds of a three and a half minute song, I think there's maybe 4 total rap sections in the album, another that's like 15 seconds in Alone, a fairly lengthy one in Hate Me and the third in B4NGB4NG!! but when they come in the guitars and the drums stop, the only thing tying these tracks in with the rest of the album is that the synthy bits that were backtracked for the rest of the album keep going and come into the center light in the absence of the more prominent instruments. The issue is I am coming at what is essentially an experimental genre reaching deathcore album, but it sort of sidelines its core sound when these trap elements come in to try and really emphasize them and I think what it really needed to work on was blending them together. The guitars shouldn't go silent when a bass drop or rap verse, but they do and if the synthy lines didn't come pick up the slack it would sound as disjointed as say taking a Carnifex album and cutting in a few Death Grips verses.

On the one hand, this may actually be my favorite from Within Destruction, because my inner nu-metal kid loves a good rap line in a metal song, I think how they mixed the styles has potential and I'm glad they're distinguishing themselves, however its not really well structured or written with how disjointed it feels (plus some specific lyrics are kinda cringy, especially on Hate Me).

I've been sitting here behind my keyboard for minutes now just trying to find an idea of something worse that came out this year than a couple of Slovenian deathcore musicians taking up modern Japanese influence and aesthetics and combining them with an outdated cloud rap style. I unfortunately can't bid you much on that. It's beyond me why I praised this band for their one decent album, Void, back in 2016. The music itself on that record, being decent deathcore, I found the atrocious marketing tactics that the band used which was dickriding the "slam" wave (hurr hurr hurr we're a deathcore band that calls themselves slam xD that'll show em xD you guise are the SLAM POLICE if you disagree xD) god that was fucking.... gay. I should've been turned away by these guys' cringe personalities and childish humor at the get-go had I known it was gonna get worse as the years went on.

If it's not embarrassing enough that this central European 4-piece are surprisingly not high school children, which I myself would be inclined to believe if it weren't for the fact that the drummer and vocalist (the only remaining original members) are somehow in their 30s. It is rather the fact that the entire band sans the aforementioned members has walked out on this unit. Well I don't blame them. Both new guitarist duties for this album have since been handed over to an Italian and a Thai-Ameircan, which isn't surprising because why would anyone else in Slovenia besides these two jerkoffs have the morality to actually stand to perform this absolute horse shit?

Within Destruction's horrendous fourth studio album Yōkai is a trend of the week nu metalcore-cum-deathcore shitshow, if this came out in 2012, I guarantee you instead of trap beats, they'd be using dubstep wobbles. Why would they actually think this is a good idea? That's the kind of thought you'll have listening to this shit from start to end. While the deathcore elements aren't completely abolished, the vanilla nu metal and faux metalcore ingredients spoil the fun, sprinkle on top some wannabe trap bullshit and you've got the general idea of the recipe here. From the out-of-place intro to the djent-fueled second track it quickly becomes apparent that Within Destruction aren't the type of band attempting to work on their sound from album-to-album and they are instead a trendhopping joke which this album further shows they make no excuses for. Let’s look at their resumé; in 2012 they were playing melodic deathcore, in 2015-2018 they were playing brutal deathcore which was the appropriate time period to cash in on fake "slam" kids that thought trash like Vulvodynia was "slam", but as soon as those kids heard Devourment they knew it was time to move on and here we are. You guys are a bit late to the Yung Lean fandom, but good to see you made it (not).

Now I just have to mention, didn't Annotations of an Autopsy do something similar to what WD do with every album nearly 10 years ago? Why do we need another deathcore band drastically changing their sound every album to try to ride the tides of what's cool at the time? Well thankfully AOAA returned to brutal deathcore with a great EP not that long ago, which I much prefer you reading this go listen to rather than this shit. I spent two different occasions of my free time to hear this crap and I want that time back. And there's no turning back now, so I have to write about what I heard.

"Kings of Darkness" is essentially the only track on here which I found to be the only saving grace that preserves some of the deathcore elements of the band's previous records, there's also some parts in "No Mercy" and "Backstab" as well that resemble those moments but even then it's not like they're entire songs; which just goes onto prove that this really isn't the same band anymore. There's way too many moments which fill out the lack of creativity with diarrhea djent shit ... Why in the name of fuck is djent still a thing? Hearing djent tones in 2020 is like an audial queue for shitty bands to know that they're shitty. It almost saves you the work of deciding if you like it or not. At least it does for me. I'm not even going to comment on the J-rapper guest features because they're not memorable nor really do anything for these songs.

Being a lover of hip hop styles to the liking of trap/cloud rap/phonk since 2013, it just brings my piss to a boil that deathcore bands such as this have already been ass-raping slam death metal for years (despite not sounding anything like it, i’m only speaking from the fact that they ruined the name of slam for years as milked it for all it’s worth merely as a marketing term) and now they're attempting to cash in on meshing their deathcore nativity with trap because they heard a $uicideboy$ song on YouTube in the past 3 years?? Fuck off.

I am not completely against deathcore musicians pursuing eccentric musical alternatives (see Mitch Lucker & Big Chocolate's duo effort Commissioner for a brilliant hybridization of heavy electronic musicianship with brutal screams and growls), nor am I against the blatant outright influence of metal into trap music, I mean I loved Ghostemane when he was first coming out around 2015, even now I still listen to a lot of Gizmo and City Morgue, but the alternative approach of a metal band (particularly deathcore) attempting to pursue the genre is never not cringe as all fuck I mean let's not ignore the fact that Acrania's Luke Griffin even has his own shitty trap project where he growls over beats, hell even Impending Doom's Brook Reeves has one as well. Perhaps Within Destruction can collab with Lil Xan next year and create the ultimate shit biscuit the world has ever seen in recent music. Can we please just get a mutual agreement here that deathcore guys need to leave trap the fuck alone? It's never cool, it's never good, it always sucks and Within Destruction's Yōkai is just another example of such. Fuck this shit.

I don't think anyone who's seen Within Destruction live in the past couple of years was particularly surprised by the band taking this direction, even before the release of the now somewhat infamous Hate Me single and video. They were playing trap beats, pretty loudly and for long enough to draw attention to their use, directly before coming onstage in every performance I've seen by them. Now, they have opted to begin incorporating these kinds of influences, among others, into their music and, unsurprisingly, it's become a controversial album in the deathcore scene upon release. The band already had amassed a reasonable fanbase for their two preceding albums, which generally occupied the "slamcore" niche, albeit with a more prominent deathcore influence than contemporaries like Vulvodynia, as well as containing a notable if not entirely unique self-aware and goofy sense of humor. Despite the goofy internet presence and attitude, their music was ferocious and fit well with the horrifying and hulking monsters on their album covers. I am glad to say that they haven't totally abandoned this sound in this release, merely tinkered with it and added some new and rather unorthodox elements. They've already demonstrated the ability to drastically change sounds, as their first album lay much more in the melodeath-influenced area of deathcore. This was a sound they entirely abandoned - their music hasn't ever lacked melodic sensibility but they've never really made anything that sounds like From The Depths since it came out. Now, they've added modern trap-style percussion and production to most of the songs, put a few rappers on guest spots on the album, upped the general ambience by a lot - and dumbed the lyrics down to what seems like parody-level ridiculousness.

It is this last aspect that seems to have attracted the most criticism. I cannot deny, when Hate Me first came out as a single, I was somewhat alarmed myself - "watashi wa sadboi kroo"? Really? Right after this album came out, I went back and listened to their previous album Deathwish. Upon doing so, I was struck by how incredibly well-written the lyrics were - notably better than a lot of lyrics for similar bands, including the ones who hailed from countries where English was the first or second language of the country, unlike Within Destruction's native Slovenia. But instead of making me even more frustrated about the lyrics here, it made me think - Rok Rupnik or whoever is writing the lyrics for this group, clearly has a capable enough grasp of the language to do whatever it is they're trying to do. They very, very obviously (just listen to Harakiri's hook, for Pete's sake) have decided to make sillier music with sillier lyrics. Not liking this would still be a personal preference I could more than understand, but I've realized that, firstly, the lyrics are just not that important for this music, and secondly, to the extent that they are, they succeed in conveying a kind of ridiculous, very self-aware "tough guy" kind of image.

But what of the actual rest of the music? Regardless of how I might theorize about why the lyrics are the way they are, if the music sucked those lyrics would make it seem so much worse. Well, to anyone who was worried, the guitars still mainly sound like deathcore guitars. There aren't really any out-and-out slams here, but this does sound somewhat recognizable as the band that recorded Deathwish and Void - we still get blast beats, chug riffs, breakdowns, pinch harmonics, and gutturals, and they're executed well. Metal purists might not be super happy about the newer elements, but there's enough real riffage that nobody will (or should, anyway) accuse Within Destruction of having forgotten who they are or moving entirely away from the deathcore genre (to anyone baffled at that strange cover and has been wondering through this review exactly how much metal is on display here, the answer is still a lot). The songs that focus more on the metal elements, like Kings Of Darkness, Malevolent, and No Mercy, are really good. Based on these songs, I think that even if Within Destruction had decided not to innovate their sound whatsoever beyond "modern deathcore", this would still be one of my favorite extreme metal releases of the year. There are a lot of real riffs to get real excited about here. I can guess based on listening to this album that these guys have been listening to, among other things, Brand Of Sacrifice, Rings Of Saturn, Infant Annihilator, and I, Valiance - No Mercy particularly reminds me of Brand Of Sacrifice, while Backstab contains the most moments that call to mind Rings Of Saturn's trademark snazzy and spazzy hyper-technical writing style. This never feels unoriginal - everything on this album makes sense coming from this band.

Well, okay, maybe not everything, depending again on how familiar you were with the group before this album came out. This new sound I keep mentioning but haven't really gone much into - it's done really well. The intro track is all trap-inflected electronica that will give you sort of an idea of what to expect, and then the first track after that pretty effectively mixes the straightforward deathcore guitars and vocals with the electronic elements, which consists mostly of trap percussion and some synths. This is par for the course for many of the songs on the album - while their real drummer still gets plenty of time to shine, there are a lot of electronic percussion parts, employed alongside synth lines. I read someone describe the sound as "dreamy" and "like entering into another world" before I listened to it and, while it might be hard to picture a dreamy-sounding album by a band like Within Destruction, I think this kind of fits. As strange as the cover may seem at first, after a few listens, I think it truly does fit the vibe of the music. We also hear some nice prog guitar playing/shredding by Jason Richardson on the instrumental penultimate track. The fact that the band chose to put arguably the two most experimental songs right at the end, and then follow the instrumental with another instrumental closing piece, could seem like a mistake in pacing, and I'll admit that it kind of seems like the metal disappears faster than the album does, but...actually listening to it, I don't have a problem with it, so I don't think it makes sense to see it as a problem. The rapping is also integrated pretty well, although it's really not a huge presence (just showing up in two songs). None of it is "verse of the year" material, nor is it as good, perhaps more relevantly, as what you'll hear on recent releases by trap metal artists who reside more on the hip-hop side of the spectrum, like City Morgue or Lil Darkie, but it sure works, especially Kamiyada's feature on B4NGB4NG!!

Again, I'm sure metal purists won't be super jazzed about these new ingredients in the Within Destruction sound, although I'm not sure how many people like that are the kind of folks who were into Within Destruction in the first place - they were never strangers to being a little goofy, self-aware, and willing to poke fun at "serious" metalheads. Slamcore is the kind of thing a lot of elitists love to hate anyway. However, the fact is that bands change, deathcore is still evolving, and there's clearly an audience for this kind of thing right now. I for one am happy with how well Within Destruction's experimentation has paid off, and I will be eagerly watching to see where their career goes from here. Maybe next we'll get a ZillaKami collab, who knows?