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.

If you have any questions about this, may I introduce you to the first track, which is also the title track, so the boys let you know what’s up immediately with what could only be called a dirge if it weren’t for the double bass flourishes. There’s a hook you’ll be viciously humming to yourself in the grocery store, scaring everyone with your stank face. That will continue once you think about the super heavy breakdown to end the track. If anyone looks at you funny, just say “Signs of the Swarm, dude.” They’ll get it.

“All I need to become god is for all of you to die,” is the main hook of the next one, which has some Within the Ruins flourishes, as well as some synths. Those precede another monstrous breakdown to end the track. What more could you desire?

You’ll get a lot of brutality and you’ll like it. It all seems unrelenting until “Shackles Like Talons,” which begins quietly, making David’s deep growls over the music sound menacing. It’s one of the longer tracks and has some quieter moments with spoken words later. The brief solo, and in fact the end of the track altogether sounds like the band I mentioned in the last paragraph. Except of course that breakdown.

A couple of tracks later is “The Witch Beckons,” which features Matt Heafy of Trivium. I swear that dude’s everywhere now, which makes me think he’s finally getting his due. His throat-shredding screams about a minute and a half in are unmistakable. If you were looking for the beatdown to be taken down a notch here with some cleans, as I was when I saw his name listed, that’s too bad. Another badass breakdown ends it.

Not unlike the other upper-echelon deathcore bands, these dudes seem to write sledgehammer breakdowns in their sleep. Look no further than (insert track here) for proof. That does not, however, mean that they all sound the same. It’s difficult to write deathcore songs that are distinguishable from one another. They did it on Absolvere, and once again here. As “Echelon” starts to get near the end, there’s a slight presence of background synths, but you know what’s coming and unlike my ex-girlfriend, they finish what they started.

The final track, “Malady,” comes and goes so quickly it doesn’t feel like a closer. This is a rare instance where a 42-minute album may seem long in the middle, but after it’s over, I just want more. Especially with deathcore. Rarely, anything past 30 minutes isn’t tiring (looking your way Lorna Shore). The production also has something to do with this as it’s well-balanced and doesn’t feel like it’s intentionally trying to rupture my eardrums (refer to the above band, too). Add this to the countless things Signs of the Swarm does right.

At the end of the album and this review, I reflected on how much I enjoyed it. Is it biased? These dudes are from my local “scene,” and I see them around. So, yes, I did want to like ite. However, when I questioned myself writing this review, I realized I only remember 4 deathcore albums this year; Suicide Silence, Mental Cruelty, Crown Magnetar, and now Signs of the Swarm. There’s just something about a band who is confident in who they are, great at it, and not against experimentation, if only in spurts. This is a band at the top of their game, and if there’s any fairness in the world, they’ll be on top of deathcore along with the other kings. This is all to say it’s excellent, and I’m looking forward to seeing them at the release show on July 28^th.

Now these guys never really appeared on my radar for the last three efforts, being simply another by the numbers deathcore band that CJ McGreery was somehow  in, but like the jump label mates Osiah made from Kingdom of Lies to Loss, Signs Of The Swarm have elevated their game exponentially, and put their name in the upper echelon of the genre along with the above-mentioned labelmates as well as Crown Magnetar and Lorna Shore as 2021s top deathcore releases.

Even with a slightly more progressive development, that’s a smaller version of the evolution that Whitechapel made on The Valley, Absolvere still hits hard, at times as hard or harder than Osiah’s Loss, and delivers more than enough stupidly heavy breakdowns and super deep inhaled vocals from David Simonich, now on his second album for these guys (is it me or are deathcore vocalists getting just ridiculously deep and monstrous here of late??) .

Starting with opener “Hymn ov Invocation”, you get 10 songs of no nonsense modern deathcore (the presence of the ‘ov’ here and in “Revelations ov a Silent King”, teases Lorna Shore, Worm Shepard-like blackened symphonics, but these guys use keyboards super sparingly). Every song has something to break stuff to, notably “Totem”, “Nameless” and utterly stupidly heavy  “Revelations ov a Nameless King” ( also, it seems like breakdowns are getting heavier and heavier as well) and ample blast beats and a few moments of progressive interplay with both, such as the whispered closing bridge in “Boundless Manifestations”,  the well done clean vocals in “Dreaming Desecration” and “Death Whistle”, and the shorter instrumental title track.

The album’s latter songs feature some guest performances from Alex Erian of Despised Icon in “Hollow Prison” , another ridiculously heavy number, and Ben Duerr of Shadow of Intent on “Blood Seal”, an almost 6 minute number with a a more progressive last half, including a nice lead solo. “Death Whistle” ends the album with another longer, more varied, moodier number, showing guys can mix it up and deserve to be in the conversation with some of the genre’s top acts with Absolvere.