While a fairly standard metalcore meets death metal affair, Atlantis is the first Blood & Ink release I have enjoyed since Foreknown’s Calm Seas Don’t Make Sailors and With Blood Comes Cleansing’s debut Golgotha, as the likes of Skylines, Blessed By A Broken Heart, Stars Are Falling, Nashemah, The Gentleman’s Pistols, Burden of a Day and Enlow and such show the label to me no more than a Victory Records wannabe.

Filling the middle ground between crumbling deathcore and catchy, melodic, dual guitar melodic metalcore, Michigan’s Besieged are hardly original in today’s contrived scene, but to their credit, they do have some solid songs and riffs to make the album a little above average with their passionate yet heavy delivery.

Despite mixing the now Victory perfected mix of stern breakdowns, dual galloping European guitars, screams, impressive deep bellows, acoustic breaks and gang chants, Besieged manage to generally avoid the poppy, emo vocals (with the exeption of “Moustache Pete”) or musical breaks that plague many of their peers. The song writing is what makes Atlantis standout from the similar looking pack, with some solid breakdowns (“Carved in the Walls”, “INRI”, “The Fall of Man: the Rise of Self”) very nice melodies and licks in tracks like “Balkanization”, “The Author”, “Guttersnipe”, “The Years Between”, “They Shake the Earth” and “Atlantis”, all kept a little more brutal by way of the impressive roars of vocalist Mattie, who could growl for the most brutal Death metal bands, and a stout production.

Hardly an essential purchase, but worthwhile of you see it laying around used or cheap on eBay as it definitely has some above average moments despite the saturation of the genre.

[Visit the band's website]

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