Shortsight- Cold Wounds Waking

Shortsight is a melodic metalcore band from Belgium. This album came out in 1996 on Good Life Recordings. The melodic vocals of singer Saskia Verbeke are simply breathtaking. The music on this album is so unique sounding and the guitar solos are amazing. I have been listening to this album since 1997 and it never gets boring. Cold Wounds Waking is as vital to me as the first time I ever heard it. In the days of run of the mill records that is really saying something. Shortsight was an awesome band. Saskia is a female singer and her vocal cadence is just perfect. Shouted male vocals are also present and fit well when they are used to enhance the mood of the album. Her vocals are haunting like a banshee in the dark making you scream your guts out until you have made a mess of the floor with your blood. The guitar playing is simply fantastic with riffs galore. To me the guitar riffs can resemble Iron Maiden and Helloween in technical ability. This band is so talented yet they come from the hardcore scene. The solemn vocals remind me of a lynx in the forest who controls the hunt with razor sharp teeth and the primal wit that lands the animal a huge kill in just minutes. The drums are powerful and are the backbone of this record. The guitar solos take you to another place and another land from a time before that was regal and majestic. Some very frantic and hushed vocals at the same time here make me think of a masked silent killer that has killed many with his cerated knife tonight. This is a metalcore album that is very unique sounding and with this style could only come from Belgium. That is because Belgium is the homeland of Shortsight. This band has tons of melody in almost every song. The dynamics on this record are just downright impressive. This is such a classic release and to me this an ultimate classic. The beautiful vocals of female singer Saskia make this album even more impressive. The guitar work is almost as important to this release because it sounds otherworldly. You should for sure check out Cold Wounds Waking. This is a one of a kind experience. Please enjoy this album. Thanks.
Kevin

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This Day Forward-The Transient Effects Of Light On Water

This Day Forward is a metalcore band from Philadelphia. This album came out in 2000 and was released by Eulogy Recordings. I just heard this album very recently so I am late to the party. The early 2000's was a great time for metalcore so it was easy to miss some albums. The album artwork is strange and abstract like the Snapcase Lookinglasself album cover. This Day Forward is known as one of the best metalcore bands of the early 2000's. So what do I think? I think they are a really amazing band. This album has everything you could want in a metalcore album. It has sick brutal screaming and some great beautiful singing. These guys play music so well that they make it sound easy. The band members could play in a modern classical band that is how good they are. The screaming and growling vocals are so powerful that they sound like someone stole a locomotive and proceeded to run down everybody in a five mile radius. The guitar playing is astounding. The guitars sound like planes crashing into each other at maximum speed. They have beautiful interludes that go straight into brutal mosh parts. This should make for some awesome hardcore dancing. The drummer is just destroying his drum set and he sounds like a master killer that is ready to take out hundreds with his deadly sword. His growling is so vicious that it can attack you like a hyena with a horrible case of rabies. What makes this band so special is that they have the dynamics to go from such heaviness in the vocals and the music to such beauty in the music and the singing at the drop of a hat. It is really very impressive. I would have to go as far as to say that if you like metalcore you are going to absolutely love this album. My final take is that this album has something for everyone. I do believe this could be one of the best metalcore albums of the early 2000's. During that time they had so many amazing hardcore albums come out and this was one of them. Thanks.  Kevin

For The Love Of-Feasting On The Will Of Humanity

For The Love Of is a metalcore band from Colonia, New Jersey. This album came out in 1998 and was released by Ferret Music. I never heard this album when it originally came out. I actually only heard this album a couple of years ago. I had always heard about the scary looking album covers and the infamous live shows. People always talked about how legendary For The Love Of and this album were. So a couple of years a go after hearing this album what I can say is all of the hype was justified. This is an amazing album and a legendary band. This is a crazed frenzy of an album that takes you for a wild ride. It has these beatdown style hardcore breakdowns that must have made a For The Love Of mosh pit totally ballistic. We have crunchy guitar work here and epic high pitched vocals that set the standard for many metalcore bands. For The Love Of has become a very influential band in the hardcore scene. This album still sounds current today. But it creates this feeling that it is lurching out to get you and pick you off one by one. We have fast blasting drums that are ready to lay down the gauntlet. Also some nice technical guitar riffing appears on this album. The singers screaming and growling vocals just feel like he wants to shake you and squeeze you until you can understand what he is saying. But his vocals are impossible to understand so he will probably end up choking you. This album is like a game of cat and mouse but both the cat and the mouse are strapped with guns. We have a definite hardcore feel to this album. But it is still a metalcore album with this being a very evil sounding album. It is like you are being stalked by a deranged killer but the only thing you have to hide behind is just your own computer. This album feels like a real life horror movie filled will psycho killers and ghastly ghouls from beyond. This album is intense from start to finish. It is really heavy and has a ton of speed to it also. This is a classic album and For The Love Of is a classic band. I highly recommend this album. So check it out.     Thanks Kevin

Azazel- Ashes To Ashes

Azazel is a metalcore band from Winston Salem, North Carolina. This album originally came out on Tribunal Records in the year 2000 and was reissued in 2008. I first heard about Azazel because of their record label Tribunal Records. At the time Tribunal was a new label and had just put out the Sever The Fallen album and the Prayer For Cleansing album. I was crazy about these albums and I had to have every album that Tribunal was releasing. So of course I bought the Azazel album and it was amazing. The singer of Azazel has a very powerful voice. His voice is almost demonic sounding. We have great technical guitar work here and even guitar solos. I love The Exorcist sample and other horror movie samples. This album is metalcore but it is almost just an outright extreme metal album. The drumming feels like an all out attack on the senses. I am just a sucker for these hardcore breakdowns. This album has a suffocating feeling like it is going to try to strangle you and make you pass right out from the sheer brutality of it all. This is a monumentally brutal release and I can't get enough of it. This album has an overall feeling of death that makes it sinister and evil sounding. If you had a soundtrack to claustrophobia this would be it. The singer has these hoarse guttural vocals that just put this album over the top. He is just sick and insane sounding. I really love the hell out of this album by Azazel. This album is simply awesome. So please check it out and thanks for reading.  Kevin