LORNA SHORE

Immortal CENTURY MEDIA

New Jersey nasties get stuck in the deathcore doldrums

Incorporating black and extreme symphonic metal into their sound for album three, Lorna Shore are bigger, harder and nastier than ever before – gnashing, clawing and rending their way towards a gruesome climax before… stopping. Even pushing into the upper echelons of extremity hasn’t managed to fully tear the band away from deathcore’s pitfalls, the ambitious passages of blistering intensity stopped dead by stale tropes. Used sparingly, slow grind is a teeth-gnashing destructive force, but Lorna Shore drop breakdowns like it’s a contractual obligation, reducing otherwise excellent extremity into turgid mush. Focusing on the band’s more grandiose leanings (particularly on Warpath Of Disease, Obsession

and Relentless Torment)

paints a picture of a talented band wasting away in unexceptional terrain. ■■■■■■■■■■

FOR FANS OF: Carnifex, Anaal Nathrakh, Aversions Crown

RICH HOBSON with a penchant for somnambulant space rock, haunting ambience and warped post-metal. There are times when Oresteia

sounds suspended in space, as Bezaelith’s pure voice passes through, disembodied but radiating tender melancholy, over rippling waves of plaintive synth. But there are plenty of earthbound and heavy moments too; The Furies

detours into scaly, angular riffing and jarring bursts of flailing black metal, and Sister In Silence reveals a debt to blackened hardcore. Best of all,

Libation Bearers revels in sleepy, Floydian drift, as the grimly gothic collides with the woozily transcendental. Progressive, cinematic and eccentric to its core,

Oresteia may be just the immersive escape from reality that we all need.

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FOR FANS OF: Myrkur, Wolvennest, The Gathering DOM LAWSON

Infiltrators, Writhe sticks to old-school chug while the title track is fuelled by Scandinavian DM motifs. Twitching Tongues’ Taylor Young lends his pipes to the ominous blast of Artificial Integration, but the pick is

Subjected To Irritants with its tsunami of beatdownheavy belligerence. ■■■■■■■■■■

FOR FANS OF: Despised Icon, Entombed, Conjurer ADAM REES