Hooray, for once I'm first to add something to the database!

Anyway, about the album itself, so far I'm not really looking forward to this. It's lacking the sheer heaviness and vocal display of Desolation of Eden (where Recreant literally ends with a 1 minute long downtempo breakdown), or the Jason-core of Ashes to Ashes. This feels a bit too much like a poor man's Traitors. Similar chugging approach and tough-guy vocals but instead with hilariously horrible lyrics and a lack of interesting songwriting.

"AND WHILE YOU'RE AT IT YOU CAN PUBLISH THIS DICK" (an actual line from Clickbait) is becoming a meme in the deathcore community just because that lyric goes lower than even Attila quality (the band known for gems like "SUCK MY FUCK" and "HUSTLE HARD OR BE A PIECE OF SHIT" in the same song). At least Attila isn't serious.

Aside from Skin Deep having it's moments good god is this a big step down from Ashes to Ashes, no wonder Jason left.

Some thoughts I wrote down while listening to the album:

I don't know if I set my expectations so exceedingly low that it was near impossible for them to fail to live up to it, but this isn't horrible. The production and guitar tone is still awful, so are the lyrics, but there are a few catchy moments here and sometimes it's just as heavy as Desolation Of Eden. This is definitely their darkest album. Not a good album, definitely their weakest, but really it's a 5-6 out of 10, not a 4 like i was expecting.

Knowing how bad Alex is at writing lyrics involving women, I was ready for "Love Song" to be a disaster.

"DID I FUCKING STUTTER I SAID GET THE FUCK OUT"
"LOOK ME IN THE EYES I SAID GET THE FUCK OUT"

Yep. Alex never fails to impress me with his wordplay.

But there are some surprisingly good songs here. "Scratching And Screaming" was actually really good, might be one of the best songs the band has ever put out:



"Life Sentence" was also pretty good. I feel as if it's the only song where the formula worked. Less junz and a bit more ambience, a formula that has worked great for Thy Art Is Murder and Fit For An Autopsy, and isn't too bad here. Add in the Ashes To Ashes sound and you've got one of the better songs on the album.

"Never, Forever" is a song I absolutely never expected to hear from this band. Kinda reminds me a little bit of Make Them Suffer... if they were to fire Louisa and replace her with a generic (male) metalcore clean singer (ability to sing not required), have Sean go through years of vocal damage, and piss off the producer. For reference, "Elegies" is a MtS song that sounds roughly similar to this.

"Say Goodbye" had surprising female clean vocals and sounded like something straight off of Ashes To Ashes except without Jason sweeps. Definitely one of the best songs of the album, which is sad when you think about how this would have been a pretty "meh" song on Ashes To Ashes.

But throughout all of this is just literally the exact same 0-0-0-0-0-0 chug repeated with no variety, same horribly damaged Alex vocals, same everything with the only difference being whether they to choose to write a good song or a br00tal one. But the non-singles were actually the best songs on the album. I'm pleasantly surprised.

This is a 6/10 for me, because the bad songs still exist, the lyrics are still awful, production still sucks, Alex has fallen so far from his Desolation Of Eden grace, but you can still sense the same band from Evolve and Ashes To Ashes here. There are some genuinely very good songs here. From "Scratching And Screaming" onwards the album is actually pretty good.

So color me surprised.