Album Review: August Burns Red – Death Below

By DAN SOUTHALL

AUGUST Burns Red have been around a long time now and have  proven many doubters wrong.

Their brand of metalcore has always drawn in many various flavours and influences, remaining on the heavier side of the street but with a knack for upping the proggier elements or melody, giving birth to a sound that is very much identifiable as them.

In true ABR fashion, this album opens with some ambience with “Premonition” as it boils and bubbles into life before launching into the rather epic “The Cleansing” a true journey of every stylistic facet the band are capable of, part hardcore stomp, heavy metal rager and masterful prog melodies jammed together into something that just works.

The pummelling continues as the band drive through the first half of the album, with Jesse Leach  from Killswitch Engage helping to lay smooth melodies and add extra angry to “Ancestry”. It’s adding an extra something that isn’t needed but, who doesn’t like extra spice in the pot? This extra spice and cranky is something that Death Below is great for. The world stopped turning for a few years and August Burns Red just got pissed off.

The melody and drama is still there, but it is used more to allow a track to breathe such as the prog driven “Fool’s Gold in the Bear Trap” or the tranquility that is so fleeting in “Revival”, just enough time to catch one’s breath among the maelstrom.

Even ten albums deep, August Burns Red are still out to prove their worth in the sea of short attention spans, ensuring you hold onto the bitter end as “Reckoning” featuring Spencer Chamberlain of Underoath creates a bookend to the opening 1-2 punch  as it ebbs and flows through every element they’ve been able to muster in the preceding 11 tracks.

This album isn’t about to kick off any new trends or invite a whole new fan base, but if you like your music heavy as brass balls and as challenging as stubbing your toe on purpose, what you are looking for is right here, and it just gets better with each listen.