Band:	Tides Of Virtue
Album:	Malevolence
Style:	Melodic death metal, Metalcore
Release date:	May 2010

01. Fields Of Solitude
02. No Coming Back
03. Emperors
04. The Pain Continues
05. Malevolence
06. Felo De Se [instrumental]
07. Destruction Of The Fortress
08. Fabric Of Destiny
09. Burning Away Our Conciousness
10. The Ferryman

Melodic Death Metalcore
Recorded: Studio 6, UK 2009
Label: Transcend Records
Total Running Time: 45:53


Tides Of Virtue's debut Malevolence turns out to be some kind of inbred bastard child of harsh melodic death metal and what appears to be... brute metalcore... Yikes!
So uhm, how do newcomers sell 4th generation metalcore in the metal community these days anyway? Especially to the most stubborn so-called true metalheads who will probably need this release as much as they need a scrotum amputation. Let's see if we can predict where this is headed, eh?


Everything about this album just screams face-melting metal, to begin with. Pretty sure "brutal" is a wrong denotation, still this is such a beast of an album it will eat the Cloverfield monster alive. It's a steaming brew of melodic death metal grooves and energetic ravaging metalcore. The band is no light-years ahead of their time, though there's definitely an ambition to turn the -core trash into a treasure.

When the true metalhead retorts: metalcore-ish metal that tries to be somewhat different? No thanks. I'd rather get buttraped by a cactus while I stab myself in the face with a rusty chaisaw.

And yet the album keeps soldiering on: the muscular sound of Malevolence will rip your beating heart out and stomp on it, while playing another luscious riff of bare-faced aggression. You'll feel pleasantly violated; give it a chance by listening.

Yet the true metalhead retorts: tolerance? Fuck no. I'd rather die this instant and reincarnate as the pet hamster of a vicious pet hamster molester.

And yet Malevolence stays calm and points out the fact this is metalcore with inspiration and without the herd mentality. Agreed, it answers, our music is not entirely breakdown-free or blastbeat-free. But hey, at least we don't have any of those obnoxious clean vocals. And at least you can tell the difference between two subsequent tracks. And at least we don't have any kind of second-rate riffs even Bullet For My Valentine would throw in the garbage bin. All it takes is a wee bit of the average metalhead's sense of open-mindedness.

Yet the true metalhead retorts: Open-mindedness? Fuck no. I'd rather get gunned down with paintball bullets made of fresh diarrhea.

Finally the album says: why don't you go outside and bite the curb, honey, I'll be out in a sec. If you have to put your money on the one band that has the potential to revolutionize the modern melodic-death-metal-kind-of-metalcore sound, Tides Of Virtue are the safest investment. The haters can fuck themselves.