Band:	Whitechapel
Album:	Our Endless War
Style:	Deathcore
Release date:	April 29, 2014
A review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. Rise
02. Our Endless War
03. The Saw Is The Law
04. Mono
05. Let Me Burn
06. Worship The Digital Age
07. How Times Have Changed
08. Psychopathy
09. Blacked Out
10. Diggs Road
11. A Process So Familiar [bonus]
12. Fall Of The Hypocrites [bonus]

If Whitechapel has one saving grace, it is that they do deathcore better than most bands. Of course, to paraphrase M*A*S*H's Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, that is akin to being the best hockey player in Ecuador. Our Endless War sticks out not so much like a rose in a minefield as like a slightly less poisonous frog in a rain forest full of incredibly poisonous and extremely lethal frogs.

Our Endless War, like any good deathcore album, makes liberal use of monotones - sometimes extending to three or four different notes once Whitechapel have wholly exhausted the possibility of playing the same note any harder than they already have. This is not to say that the album is without its moments; "Blacked Out" hosts a killer solo, and the riffing in the title track makes it quite an excellent song. While I recognize the consternation this observation might inspire, Whitechapel have of late been incorporating djenty elements into their sound. There were a few times throughout this album when the slightest hint of Meshuggah crept into my mind. For the most part, though, the riffs, if there are any, lack imagination.

Nobody ever comes to this scene looking for poetry. I suppose you can't be disappointed without hoping for something, but you can still be put off by the "2 br00tal 4 sk00l" attitude that dominates about half the songs on the album. Fans of basic slam will really dig "The Saw Is The Law" and "Psychopathy." There is nothing quite like growl-rapping over a breakdown to get the blood pumping. To be fair, though, Whitechapel have wisely opted to use fewer than the standard seven breakdowns per song, which really allows the songs to develop on their own. Rather than serving as a buildup to something underwhelming, tracks like "Mono" and "Diggs Road" try to go somewhere without being roped into a brick wall by the end of the first chorus. The same cannot be said for "Let Me Burn" or "How Times Have Changed."

This review might seem pretty bipolar in tone, and for good reason; my feelings about Our Endless War - and Whitechapel as a whole - tend to be ambivalent. Typically I enjoy deathcore only when tech death bands stumble across the blurred boundary accidentally, and then only on rare occasions. As I mentioned in the first sentence, however, Whitechapel utilize this sound more effectively than most other deathcore bands, and this is enough to make me interested, even hopeful about their releases. Our Endless War isn't great, but it is still something I could consider a credit to the deathcore genre.