Metalcore has always been slammed for not being original enough. Since about 2006 many of the Slayer-tshirt-and-camo-short-wearing-“that’s-not-metal”-brigade have criticised it for all having been done before, and will in Miss May I‘s case this may well be true, a lot of what you are going to find on Deathless, their fifth release in their six year career, was done by them.
This album is really everything you want from a Miss May I album. At a time where so many bands seem to be striving to bring something new to the table and end up bringing something embarrassingly stale, it’s great to find a band that have unashamedly picked up their instruments to write their new album and said “Right, well, same again?” to each other.
Fans of previous Miss May I will not find Deathless to be wanting in any of the respects that made any of their previous four releases so strangely compelling to listen to. The savage, early Killswitch Engage-esque verses with Levi Benton screamingly furiously over the top of fast-paced, punchy riffs, still make you feel like you could take on a bull in a fist-fight. The choruses, owned mostly by bassist Ryan Neff’s quite frankly jealousy-inducing clean vocals, have somehow managed to become even more epic since last year’s Rise Of The Lion.
The annoying thing about Miss May I’s standard formula of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-breakdown-chorus-breakdown/outro is that it works. Not every song sticks to this formula mind you – a clear sign of progression from their early days – but even the ones that do are performed with such gusto and integrity that to call them out for an unoriginal song structure would be like trying to kick the biggest puppy in the world.
Songs like I.H.E (which we’re going to guess stands for I Hate Everything) and Bastards Left Behind are so timeless in their songwriting and fascinating in their execution that despite their generic nature they still make you feel a bit guilty when you pause them to concentrate on something else. Even moments like the gang-vocal “woah-oh” section in the title track can be forgiven due to the unapologetic way in which it is delivered. Much like the rest of the album really.
