WHITECHAPEL
Hymns in Dissonance
Metal Blade Records
Over its last couple of albums, The Valley and Kin, Tennessee deathcore titans WHITECHAPEL toned down both the "death" and "core" to a degree, introducing more melody, less bludgeon and clean vocal passages that allowed frontman Phil Bozeman to bare his soul and work through childhood trauma in vivid detail. Well with the new Hymns in Dissonance, those dalliances, for lack of a better term, seem to have served their purpose and been purged from the band's system.
Just about everything the sextet sought to minimize, or at least temper, on the last two albums is maximalized on Hymns. The curb-stomp hooks, heaving rhythms, furious blasts, quaking breakdowns and all-consuming heaviness are back with a vengeance. And Bozeman's maniacal caterwaul of gutturals, growls and screams sounds like a grizzly bear and a wolverine fighting over some fresh kill.
Pummeling only begins to describe the approach here as WHITECHAPEL takes the ferocity and concussive crunch of its earlier albums and delivers it with a sense of pent-up aggression being unleashed. Perhaps after its "kinder, gentler" turn the band was feeling a bit left behind or overshadowed by the likes of LORNA SHORE, INGESTED, SHADOW OF INTENT, etc., who have been taking deathcore/slam extremity to new, well, extremes and making tons of new fans along the way.
Or perhaps it was feeling less restrained with guitarist Zach Householder producing the new album in house, after five albums with Mark Lewis turning the knobs, and just went balls out - not to say that Lewis had actually been holding the band back. Whatever the impetus, WHITECHAPEL has delivered a fucking beast in Hymns In Dissonance.
Things begin innocently enough with the atmospheric lead into "Prisoner 666", which even sounds a little bit country. But that ends abruptly in an eruption of heaviosity that is downright jarring - until it grows even heavier as Bozeman barks "I bear the number 6 6 6" and the hulking riffage from the three-headed monster of Householder, Ben Savage and Alex Wade begins in earnest.
It's pretty much an all-out beat-down from there, save for the short instrumental segue "Ex Infernis", ably steered/powered by the band's latest drummer Brandon Zackey (either the fourth or like eighth, depending on how you count). He has his feet and hands full here as the tempos blast, chug and lurch back and forth, but is more than up to the task.
The title track builds on the intensity of "Prisoner 666" with its frantic sprints, black metal flourishes and absolutely epic breakdown that brings the song to an emphatic end. Over the remainder, WHITECHAPEL explores each of the seven deadly sins, which are central to the album's "cult" storyline, with equal vengeance.
Highlights include the "fuck them all, let them all die" mantra of the monumental "Diabolical Slumber", the careening fury of "Hate Cult Ritual" and "The Abysmal Gospel", the prescient "Mammoth God" and Bozeman's gut-busting vocalizing on "A Visceral Retch". "Nothing Is Coming For Any Us" provides a suitably cataclysmic denouement, with Bozeman offering his "cry out for god and beg for the end/No one can hear you scream, no one is coming for you," end notes before the song drifts off in a tangle of keening guitar.
While they do tend to get a bit lost in a veritable tsunami of riffs, not to mention Bozeman's vocal histrionics, there are melodic textures and overlays in the guitar work throughout the album, as well as some sly harmonized leads and brief shreddy solos. It may seem like a wee bit of lipstick on what is otherwise one very heavy, angry and ugly pig - and I mean that fondly - but it's better than nothing.
4.5 Out Of 5.0
