Born of Osiris is one of those young popular bands everyone loves to hate (moreso ‘cos of their fans I think) and they along with The Faceless initially got lumped in with the deathcore crowd. However, The Faceless further distances themselves from deathcore and aligned more with technical death metal with last year’s impressive Planetary Duality and I was curious to see what Born of Osiris did with their second offering.

What we get is a slightly more developed, melodic and progressive take on their The New Reign EP. While still a balance of deathcore and tech death metal, the synths have become more integral to the songs rather than random injections or intros and the music has become a little more choppy and complex; not quite the full on plunge into pure technical metal, but a more Meshuggah-ish realm of stammering polyrhythms (i.e. “Thrive”) and elegant solos.The end result will still see a majority of real death metal fans hate them, and the kids will still go nuts for them and get silly tattoos, but like The Faceless and Burning the Masses, Within the Ruins and such, no matter how much you hate the band, you have to admit they have some skill (a fact cemented by the addition of Animals As Leaders virtuoso Tosin Abasi to the bands ranks).

When I visited with the band at Summer Slaughter a couple of years ago, they told me the new album would be better and longer than The New Reign, and they were right on both counts. Though still relatively brisk, the 34 minutes that comprise A Higher Place (as opposed to the EP’s 21 minutes) is chock full of complex, shuddering riffs, spacey synths and a vortex of taught blast beats and arpeggios delivered in twelve succint 2-3 minute stabs. There’s not a wasted second, and even atmospheric intro “Rebirth” is well done. From there, as well as the expected staggering, lurching structures the likes of “Elimination”, “The Accountable”, “Now Arise”  and “Starved”, “Live Like I’m Real”, “Put to Rest”  and “An Ascent” are full of intricate, elegant guitar work that gives the usual deathcore throes some sense of intelligence and atmosphere as opposed to jock core, mead headed-ness.

The well placed synths of Joe Buras are cosmically atmospheric without being Winds of Plague overdone or forced or Arsonists Get All the Girl gimmicky and grating, again giving the material much more of a progressive shimmer with some very cool little refrains in almost all the songs.  The same can be said for Ronnie Canizaro who is present with enough mid range growls and never veers into full on forced, deep, death metal bellows or high register screams. The end result is a very competent and enjoyable album, that while never reaches the promise or expectations after the EP, shows that some of the kids are in fact, all right.

[Visit the band's website]

---

Comments