Lifeline Records – Teeth of the Divine

No Heaven Awaits Us – The Irony of Pure Hatred EP

Erik T — Sun, 13 May 2007 15:52:58 +0000

There’s hardcore then there’s HARD-FUCKIN-CORE. Bands like Built Upon Frustration, Sleeping Giant, Black My Heart, Redline and such make the Hot Topic core likes of Hatebreed, Terror, First Blood and their ilk look like choir boys, and Poland’s No Heaven Awaits Us is a nice addition to that group.

As expected from Lifeline Records, this brief but monstrous 7 track EP comes in a nice digi-pack, but more importantly, the music is pretty fucking destructive. More politically charged death metal than clichéd hardcore, NHAU rumble, and growl through the 7 beefy, crumbling tracks at a mid paced lope that will shake your speakers. Of course though, it’s far for creative or technical but the sheer force of chuggariffic tracks like “Hateback”, “Do You Dance” and “License to Kill” is palpable.

A promising debut, and one that if the band can avoid the line-up issues that plague anything core related, this lot could make some noise (literally) in a scene that seems more concerning with trying to being hardcore than actually playing hardcore music.

Sunrise – Cursed Not Alone

Erik T — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 13:20:51 +0000

So as I get further down into my packages of CD’s from Poland’s Lifeline Records, I get to this anthology from the now disbanded Polish Vegan Melodeath/metalcore act Sunrise. Cursed Not Alone consists of the band’s two releases, Generation of Sleepwalkers (Sanctuary Records 1998) and Child of Eternity (Sobermind Records 2000), and is are repackaged with Lifelines excellent digipack presentation.As easy point of reference for the material on this anthology is early Darkest Hour (pre So sedated So Secure even), galloping, up-tempo melodic death metal with a hardcore lean and prose and raspy screams. Both albums contained are similar, as there’s not much distinction between the two other than a slight difference in production. The tracks are all pretty decent, but none really grab me or make me wish the band was still together, and in fact the vocals are actually a bit grating.

The first 7 tracks is the later Child of Eternity release, so is a bit tighter and a bit more polished and closing track “Legacy” is a somber mid paced number that has a Dark Tranquility feel to it. The Generation of Sleepwalkers material is as expected a bit more raw and gritty, and maybe even more death metal than hardcore/metalcore with tracks like “Dead Society”, “Nightmares” and rather enjoyable “From The Lunacy”.

That all being said, for material as old as this, it actually stands up to the many bands plying the style today, being a bit of a ‘lost gem’ of sorts and comes with a bit of primal honesty rather than myspace saturated, wanna, be rock star egoism.

In Twilight’s Embrace – Buried In Between

Erik T — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 20:39:03 +0000

Here’s the second best record I got from Poland’s Lifeline records, and like the excellent Alienacja record Blades Shall Speak; an awesome digipack holding some solid melodic death metal meets deathcore.

Where as Alienacja are (were) a pummeling merciless more death metal beast, fellow Poles ITE, are a more refined melodic, slicing creature with a less burly, but still solid production delivering At The Gates inspired hack ‘n’ stab riffage littered with solid, if unremarkable breakdowns.

High pitched rasps with the occasional deep growl are the par for the course vocals, while musically the band is slightly above average with tracks like “The Hour of Retaliation” “The Hollow Man”and “On the Verge of Judgment” certainly are better than the 100’s of other US based myspace melodeath/deathcore bands simply throwing breakdowns and growls around and hoping they will stick. Still, the self explanatory “Prelude” and “Ballad” are cliched. The tracks seem to have some depth and development rather than string of riffs and random breakdowns thrown together.

Hopefully, ITE won’t follow the US trend and break up after one album as this debut shows some proimise and energy that I would like to see the band build on for future releases.

Again, my hats off to Lifeline Records for great packaging and artwork.