Source: EP Artwork
How do you stand out in today’s metalcore scene? Killswitch Engage are the ones that perfected it first; Asking Alexandria are the ones that brought it out of the underground; Bury Tomorrow and Crossfaith are taking it over to the Warped Tour kids. Step forward to be judged Black Coast – five dudes from Stoke-On-Trent who, although they have only been around for a year, have already had some larger sights turned in their direction.
One of the biggest praises to sing about this EP is that when so much of music, even heavy music, is Pro Tools’d to the eyeballs this actually sounds like guys playing songs. The riffs themselves are fairly standard hardcore slammers, with a few eyebrow-raising exceptions such as the lead line in the chorus of ‘Plagues‘ (which could really have been mixed louder) and the brief bits in the title track but they’re about as complex as they need to be. ‘Habit‘ is pretty much exactly what you would expect an under three minute hardcore/metalcore song to be these days.
Unfortunately where this EP falls through is when it comes to actual songs. Have three and a half minutes of hardcore riffs is all very well, but only the title track actually stands out as a song in it’s own right. The other four just seem to blur together in an eleven minute wash of breakdowns and shouty vocals. Maybe it’s because ‘Crows Of The North‘ is the only moment where Black Coast actually break away from the pattern they’ve shown on the rest of the EP – aiming for something more akin to While She Sleeps or High Hopes than Stray From The Path or Sick Of It All.
Crows Of The North is far from perfect. But it is by no means bad. There’s enough raw aggression and decent musical prowess in terms of understanding how the songs need to sound that even your average long-haired, Slayer shirt and corpse paint-wearing metalhead may find bits to bang their head about. There needs to be something more though, if Black Coast are going to continue in an already very saturated metalcore/hardcore market, and especially if they want to release a full-length that doesn’t lose it’s flavour almost instantly.
