In the years since All Out War's best album, 1998's For Those Who Were Crucified, the band's oscillating lineups have been unable to achieve the magic achieved on that landmark. However, 2015 resurrects the Crucified lineup, and Dying Gods is the first release from the quintessential New York metalcore band in seventeen years to feature it.
This EP could have, or should have, come out in the late '90s, and as such, comes with all the experimentation that a budding genre — as metalcore was then — entails. In some cases this is fine, such as the final riff in "Vengeance Reigns Eternal"; it seems dangerously close to overstaying its welcome before cutting out at the perfect moment. However, overindulgence rears its head on the unnecessarily long samples that inundate the release and break up the flow of the otherwise crushing crash course in, well, crushing.
Though covers of Amebix ("Arise") and Carnivore ("God Is Dead") are actually perfectly appropriate given the band's melding of punk and metal, the variance in influences and songwriting styles further hamper the release's sense of cohesion.
Ultimately, Dying Gods shows that, despite a little rust, these deities of metallic hardcore are far from being done. With a proper LP follow-up, All Out War could crucify the now much-maligned metalcore subgenre.
(Organized Crime)This EP could have, or should have, come out in the late '90s, and as such, comes with all the experimentation that a budding genre — as metalcore was then — entails. In some cases this is fine, such as the final riff in "Vengeance Reigns Eternal"; it seems dangerously close to overstaying its welcome before cutting out at the perfect moment. However, overindulgence rears its head on the unnecessarily long samples that inundate the release and break up the flow of the otherwise crushing crash course in, well, crushing.
Though covers of Amebix ("Arise") and Carnivore ("God Is Dead") are actually perfectly appropriate given the band's melding of punk and metal, the variance in influences and songwriting styles further hamper the release's sense of cohesion.
Ultimately, Dying Gods shows that, despite a little rust, these deities of metallic hardcore are far from being done. With a proper LP follow-up, All Out War could crucify the now much-maligned metalcore subgenre.
