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Walls Of Jericho

No One Can Save You From Yourself

Written by: PP on 21/04/2016 21:03:53

During the height of the metalcore wave, Walls Of Jericho released a string of albums that may not have contended with the best releases the genre had to offer, yet they are a name you'd recognize from the Trustkill Records family even today, a decade later. Fronted by one of the fiercest and most aggressive female vocalists metal has seen to date - Candace Kucsulain - Walls Of Jericho were renowned for her ability to show up the vast majority of her male peers both in terms of ferocity and live energy. Her monstrous combination of screams and yells are best compared to the mighty Scott Vogel's pissed off, uncompromising shout on Terror records, but at the same time she has no problem with the occasional melodic hardcore influence, which we hear on "Cutbird" among other tracks on their new album "No One Can Save You From Yourself". It's their first studio album in eight years, during which they played only sporadically but rarely hinted at a new album. With metalcore trickling away from its mid- to late-2000s surge in popularity, it wouldn't have surprised anyone if Walls Of Jericho would've faded away and never released another album, let alone a good one.

Although their past work was heavily flavoured by metalcore, the new record shifts the soundscape distinctly towards a straight up hardcore base with moshable rhythms and muscular riffs setting the scene for Candace to scream catchphrases left and right. After a brief intro, she opens with screams of "No person.... can stop this.... enjoy the rhythm!!" on "Illusion Of Safety", a testosterone-fueled aggressive hardcore track that should sit well with Hatebreed fans. Speaking of which, "Relentless" echoes an eerily similar theme of uncompromising hardcore attitude, as does "Damage Done" straight after.

At the same time, a melodic edge is present on a number of songs that resemble what Bane and Comeback Kid have been doing for years now. "Cutbird", in particular, draws parallels to the latter band during its "There is beauty in this, you just have to find it" passages, which find Candace in borderline clean vocal territory as she yells with a subtle sense of melody that ensures the song is one of the catchiest on the record. Likewise, "Fight The Good Fight" and "Anthem" rely on similar melodic undertones that push the tracks into melodic hardcore territory proper.

Still, to characterize "No One Can Save You From Yourself" as a melodic hardcore record isn't entirely accurate. With tracks like "Forever Militant" spewing hardcore clichés out in ferocious manner ("we build walls...to keep everybody out, we build walls, to stop all the pain, we build walls, to keep us from suffering"), the record is predominantly muscular and camo-shorts friendly, to say the least. That said, it feels simultaneously fresh and surprisingly energetic for a band that many had written off years ago. What's more impressive is that - with the exception of the awful clean vocal ballad "Probably Will" that closes the record - the band's songwriting is arguably better than it has ever been. Some of the catchiest Jericho tracks are on this record, which makes it an essential listen for hardcore fans in 2016.

Download: Fight The Good Fight, Anthem, Cutbird, Forever Militant, Relentless
For the fans of: Terror, Comeback Kid, Hatebreed, Lionheart,
Listen: Facebook

Release date 25.03.2016
Napalm Records