UPON A BURNING BODY
SouthernHostility SEEK AND STRIKE Lone Star deathcore brutalists seek to retain their mojo
It’s been a wild ride over the last decade for Upon A Burning Body. Their first two records, The World Is Ours and
Red. White. Green, saw them picking up a passionate underground following, and it looked like 2014’s The World Is My Enemy Now might have sent the band climbing into the higher echelons of the metal universe. Unfortunately for them, the fates conspired against that happening, although The World Is My Enemy remains their most commercially successful album, and 2016’s Straight From The Barrio came and went with barely a whisper, despite it being one of their best records.
It’s therefore fair to say that Southern Hostility arrives with a fair amount to prove for the Texans, but the world of metal moves pretty fast these days, and you can’t really see these songs being able to compete with the most exciting young bands we currently have in our world.
The album’s opening title track sets things up nicely. It’s only 61 seconds in length but it’s as groovy, growly and barrel-chested as Upon A Burning Body have ever been, and is followed by the excellent contemporary-Pantera crunch of King Of Diamonds. If the level of quality remained this high throughout then we might be talking about a glorious return to form here, but the band can’t quite manage it. Too often in the second half of the album there is too much reliance on regular tropes, and the sound of Southern swagger and scalding metallic riffs that cut through us all at the turn of the decade is beginning to sound slightly tired. It’s particularly clear in the trite lyrics of the plodding The Anthem Of The Doomed, and there is more than a hint of desperation at having to resort to closing the album with a heavy-handed cover of Alice Cooper’s Frankenstein – complete with Wayne’s World dialogue, in case you were in any doubt as to their thought process. Southern Hostility is decent enough, but with the bar being raised to ever-greater heights ‘decent’ won’t do for Upon A Burning Body anymore.
FOR FANS OF: Five Finger Death Punch, Emmure, Lamb Of God