Chamber (USA) - A Love To Kill For - review
Chamber (USA) - A Love To Kill For - review
Tracklist
01. Chamber02. Retribution
03. At My Hands
04. Tremble
05. To Die In The Grip Of Poison [feat. Matt McDougal]
06. One Final Sacrifice
07. We Followed You To The Bitter End
08. Our Beauty Decayed, Nothing Was Left
09. Devoured [feat. Matt Honeycutt]
10. When Deliverance Comes
11. Mirror
12. Cyanide Embrace
13. A Love To Kill For
14. Hopeless Portrait
A review by
musclassia July 31, 2023
A Love To Kill For is the second release from the Nashville 5-piece, who describe their style on Bandcamp as ‘psychotic mosh metal’. This album isn’t mathcore through and through (although, being realistic, I’m not sure any album out there is capable of being mathcore 100% of the time), with songs and passages that more closely resemble hardcore or metalcore, but the three styles offer equally belligerent aggression, so the end result here is unsurprisingly explosive.
Despite there being 14 tracks on the album, A Love To Kill For clocks in at under 29 minutes; the double-header of the 12-second Dillinger microcosm “We Followed You To The Bitter End” and 25-second breakdown-in-a-song “Our Beauty Decayed, Nothing Was Left” obviously play a role in that equation, but the remaining 12 tracks certainly don’t hang around for long, with the four-minute title track comfortably the longest here. With such a concise runtime, there’s little time to loiter, and Chamber kick off the album with a 1-minute eponymous song that very much sets the tone, jumping frantically between chaotic mathcore riffs, dazzling guitar runs, and beatdown pummellings.
After that point, some songs veer more towards metalcore heft (“Retribution”, “All My Hands”), while others let loose all the technical wizardry that Chamber (USA) have in their arsenal, such as “Tremble” and “Devoured”. Each approach has its own appeal; “All My Hands” has a solid balance of pounding, mid-tempo bulldozing and faster-paced groove, along with an air of menacing atmosphere during a drum-driven break midway through. In contrast, “Tremble” jumps around on a second-to-second basis, but still squeezes in segments during which one can let loose for some of that psychotic moshing.
If there’s one thing that currently keeps Chamber (USA) at a tier below the elite in mathcore, particularly The Dillinger Escape Plan, it’s a lack of tonal range; they don’t need to have Dillinger’s propensity towards wackiness (or, later in their career, balladry), but with just relentless viciousness, it does make it harder for tracks here to truly stand out, or for A Love To Kill For to connect at a higher level. The more brooding passages in the likes of “All My Hands”, “Tremble” and “When Deliverance Comes”, however brief they are, offer something that can be explored further in future efforts, but it’s only towards the end of the album where a little something extra begins to emerge, with the out-of-nowhere guitar solo on “Cyanide Embrace” and the ominous, atmospheric climax to the title track.
Still, it took bands like Dillinger and Rolo Tomassi a few albums to expand and round out their respective unique sounds, and Chamber (USA) have the fundamental building blocks firmly locked down here; the jagged mathcore dazzles, the riffs get you moving and the breakdowns/beatdowns demand recognition. If you’ve been waiting restlessly for a new mathcore album to grab you by the scruff of the neck, this could be it.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 8 |
| Songwriting: | 7 |
| Originality: | 6 |
| Production: | 7 |
Written on 31.07.2023 by
Written on 31.07.2023 by
Hey chief let's talk why not Comments
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Posts: 5989
Always down for some good mathcore, I was particularly more inclined to get into it after hearing that one Serpent Column EP that leaned more in that direction, and Gaza (one of my favorites for -core) could go there with their sound a bit as well. You make this one sound pretty decent, will listen soon. I don’t think the whole “the tracks don’t really stand out too much from each other” thing would bother me too much, honestly. That’s often the case with a lot of grind and hardcore: just a quick, 25 - 30 minutes of mayhem, so it kinda works better when the tracks really meld into each other IMO
---- I am the Magician and the Exorcist. I am the axle of the wheel, and the cube in the circle. “Come unto me” is a foolish word: for it is I that go. ~ II. VII
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Posts: 8696 Written by Auntie Sahar on 01.08.2023 at 04:05 Yeah, there's definitely an argument to be made for that; some albums in (prefix)-core styles clearly benefit for being a constant juggernaut for aggression. I was just thinking when I look to mathcore releases that stand out for me (Dillinger's Ire Works, Rolo Tomassi's middle era before they basically expanded beyond mathcore, more recently The Motion Mosaic's stuff), they've had a bit of a broader musical palette and peak songs that helped them reach the next level, but for what it is, this is a solid album.
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