Source: Album Artwork
Much like the Aliens franchise, deathcore as a genre probably should have known when to stop a long time ago. Aside from a few bands (mentioning no names) there doesn’t seem to be many bands even trying to do anything even remotely new or different or particularly exciting with it, and we’re now getting to a point where every band that eschews cleanly produced, super downtuned, ultra heavy death metal with plenty of breakdowns and open-string rhythmic guitar chugging sounds just like every other band doing exactly the same.
There are glimpses on The Great Collapse that suggest that Fit For An Autopsy want to be something more. ‘When The Bulbs Burn Out‘ is a shining example of this; it’s closer to something like At The Gates or Heaven Shall Burn than it is Thy Art Is Murder or Carnifex, and ‘Black Mammoth‘ with it’s new video supporting the protesters trying to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline shows that Fit For An Autopsy’s latest frontman Joe Badolato has more to sing about than just “Oooh I’m bloody angry aren’t I?”
The main let-down on The Great Collapse is that it doesn’t explore these ideas enough. For every moment where it seems possible that Fit For An Autopsy could do something really interesting within this kind of scene, there are two more that make you think the song could have just been a Thy Art Is Murder b-side. Which is a real shame, because especially in the choruses on some songs like the already mentioned ‘Black Mammoth‘, or ‘Heads Will Hang‘, there are some really interesting ideas that would be excellent to hear over the rest of the album.
We can only hope that Fit For An Autopsy do explore something a bit more different on future releases. The Great Collapse is a good album, crushingly heavy and with enough interesting moments and (surprisingly) actual choruses to keep you entertained enough. Fit For An Autopsy have built themselves a good launch pad from which to spring into somewhere that could be genuinely new and exciting – provided the deathcore scene doesn’t keep up it’s trend of being full of idiots who want to start petitions to stop bands trying something new.
