The Empire Shall Fall – Awaken (2010)

Featuring ex-Killswitch Engage vocalist Jesse Leach, we were very weary about “Awaken” from The Empire Shall Fall. We never liked Jesse’s vocals on KSE and we also don’t like 95% of the Metalcore that bands put out these days, so we imaged that we would completely rip this album to shreds and call it a day. To our surprise we actually found and interesting sounding album with “Awaken”, an album that will put many of the current Metalcore shit to the ground and Tea-bag them all night long.

Right of the bat, we still hate the vocals and we will not change our minds about them. The screams seem forced (like he has something up his ass), and the ‘growls’ seem weak in comparison to other dudes in the Deathcore/Metalcore circuit. Jesse’s clean vocals are as vanilla as they come, and there is nothing else to add about such a plain (and boring singer).

Leaving the vocals aside, we have a very interesting musical foundation behind awake. There are obvious Metalcore/Deathcore influences, but we also have a bunch of Groove-styled sections, Progressive elements and other sorts of tricks that make the music much more appealing that most breakdown after breakdown driven bands these days.

To start things, we will say that there is an uncanny resemblance to Meshuggah when it comes to most of the drumming in this release. Songs like “voices Forming Weapons” will immediately give you that feeling. But then we get songs like “Choirs of Angels” that actually sound and feel completely different to the previous song, here the drumming is different from the Meshuggah-esque songs in the album. And the focus shifts to the guitar wizardry of Jake Davenport.

Some other songs feature Metalcore heavy sections(i.e. “We The People”), but they do feature interesting switches in tempo and avoid sounding extremely cliché because of the actual complexity behind the music. If we had to point the best selling point of this album is the musicianship, both behind the music writing and the execution of the songs. Adding to this a very balanced production, and you have a pretty solid Metal album that does sound ‘commercial’, but that it also kicks ass.

In our opinion, “Awaken” is one of those albums that will be loved by all the Mallcore kids, but that also features enough credibility to be treated as a solid Metal release. The band has the skills to make good music and shake things up a bit, allowing them not to sound like your average run of the mill band. We think that the band lacks some direction on where to go with their ideas, but we expect them to release an even better second full-length album, if they could only get rid of the singer, we would be in paradise.

Release: October 12th, 2010

Country: USA