Review of Left to Vanish - Versus the Throne

There’s nothing really wrong with the debut from this Philadelphia deathcore act, as their debut is a competent delivery of now familiar genre traits; dual vocals, choppy squealing thrashing, some techy noodling and a plethora of breakdowns. However, on the whole, it really sorta bored me and I found my self reaching for After the Burial’s recent album instead.

The problem is, nothing really jumped out at me throughout the whole album, none of the breakdowns truly floored me, none of the pseudo thrash slicing throttled me and even the odd experimental and off the wall tangents (i.e. the Southern grove that rise in “Dirt Merchant”, instrumentals “White Wolf and Nash”, “February 16th, 1969”, acoustic close of “Falling in Love in Whorehouse”) seemed trite and forced. It’s possible that I’ve reached my limit for this style of crumbling over done deathcore, but like I said, when I’m still really enjoyed albums by the likes of After the Burial, The Classic Struggle and such, it shows the genre still has a hold on me and that Left to Vanish simply just don’t do it for me within the genre even with its stern but clichéd bottom end heavy production and abundance of lurching heft (i.e. “Give Us Barabbas”, “Seventeenth Year Cicadas”, “Eyeless In Gaza”, “Northern Lights”, the overly long closer “Falling in Love in Whorehouse”). But it just never rises above the level of mildly entertaining, and it all just seems like a bunch of randomly strung together squeals and chugs. In such a crowded genre though, you had better bring it better than this or get washed under the swathe of similar bands vying for Hot Topic dollars, and Left to Vanish simply don’t bring anything to break themselves away from the pack.

That all being said, if you the kind of person that just snaps up everything of this style and simply have to hear every breakdown filled, chuggy, sorta quirky combovercore styled, flash in the pan band out there, Left to Vanish will no doubt keep you amused for its 42 minute duration.