After a few albums of top-tier deathcore, Signs of the Swarm earned their spot as one of the genre’s better bands, with 2021’s Absolvere being their very peak in my humble opinion.

But on 2023’s Amongst the Low and the Empty, along with a jump from Unique Leader to Century Media, came a slight development. While certainly very high caliber deathcore, and still armed with David Simonich, arguably one of the top 5-10 vocalists in the genre, there was a little shift into slightly more djenty, restrained brutality. Not quite Whitechapel’s The Valley or Kin, but certainly a more subtle lean.

And now with album number 6, that development is fully in place as SOTS, while still very much a brutal deathcore band, has separated from peers like say Crown Magnetar and such, and developed a more controlled, lurching, and stuttering take on deathcore that’s still very much deathcore, but a little more……evolved.

Sure, the band still can beat you senseless with blasts and, of course, oodles of disgusting breakdowns, but everything seems more menacingly complex. But rather than the serial killer that simply maims, skins, and kills, SOTS stalks, tortures, and slices with a more civilized semblance of measured, precise savagery.

The opening title track sums this subtle shift perfectly and sets the tone for much of the album. As does more blasting second track “Hell Must Fear Me”, which is a twisty turny number that mixes the band’s blast beats with a stuttering, lethal heft, and both “Natural Selection”,  and “Chariot” might be the band’s most technical, djenty offering yet, actually remind of bands like Born of Osiris or After the Burial. Just heavier.

Simonich gets some help on the album’s back half with Will Ramos (Lorna Shore) helping out for the creepily hefty “Clouded Retinas” and Phil Bozeman (Whitechapel) appears on the blistering “Iron Sacrament”. And speaking of Whitechapel, “Forcing to Forget”  and  “Sarkazein” do actually introduce some cleanish croons /shouts/whispers, and more moodiness akin to The Valley/Kin, and sort of brings the album down a bit.

And in fact as”Fear & Judgement” (featuring 156/Silence), another moody track continuing the album’s late, more commercial (respectively speaking) choopy, stuttering sound, and “Creator” end the album I can’t help feel, while more adventurous and breaking from standard deathcore paradigms, the album isn’t as good as its two predecessors.

But I applaud the band for trying to break away from the genre/scene a bit. And still, the album sounds massive and certainly delivers some serious moments of stammering heft that should still keep fans happy.

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