Living Sacrifice

The Infinite Order

Written by: PP on 18/01/2010 18:53:22

Usually you can be dead sure that if a metal album is being released by Solid State Records, it's going to be fucking awesome, even if you don't know the name of the band in question. Can I point you towards exhibit A, B, C, or D? That's why it's all the more surprising that the new decade is being kicked off with possibly the weakest Solid State release in recent years, namely "The Infinite Order" by Living Sacrifice. But before we get into the specifics, here's a (very) short history lesson on the band. Living Sacrifice formed in the late 80s as a Christian death metal band, later branching out into metalcore as the years passed by, until breaking up in 2003. Fun trivia: A certain Cory Brandan used to handle the vocal duties for these guys before leaving to front Norma Jean.

The band reformed in early 2008 and started working on a new album, and "The Infinite Order" is the end result. In all honesty, maybe they shouldn't have tried to re-ignite the flame that drove them earlier in their career, because in the years that they've been gone, thousands of other metalcore bands have taken their place, many (if not most) of them much better than Living Sacrifice were in the first place. "The Reckoning" is the lone highlight with its nice lead guitar melody and a good chorus on a record that sees the band chugging away with generic metalcore riffs, showing glimpses of their death metal past in places but never really getting around the completely faceless and impression-less feeling surrounding their music especially during the first half of the album. Bands like August Burns Red come to mind because of the instrumentals, but lets face it, vocalist Bruce Fitzhugh's delivery is so unvaried and monotonous that even if you placed Between The Buried And Me behind the instruments, I doubt much of interest would come out of the project. Every now and then you have a couple of cool licks and sweeping riffs interspersing, like those you can find on "They Were Ones", but even here the band demote themselves into mindless unmelodic chug-chug mentality for periods that seem to last three times longer than they actually do.

So what to make of this? I don't know. Despite the 10+ listens I've given the album, the whole album just blends together and no track sticks to my mind. There's proof out there that metalcore can still sound awesome, original, and fresh despite what people (and me) keep telling you, but "The Infinite Order" definitely isn't it.

5

Download: The Reckoning
For the fans of: August Burns Red
Listen: Myspace

Release date 26.01.2010
Solid State Records

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