Glass Casket
We Are Gathered Here Today
Abacus Recordings
Here we have another metal/death/hardcore crossover band from North Carolina, a state that for some oddball reason seems to be serving as base camp for many of today’s underground metal heroes. Bearing a number of similarities to their more well-known counterparts, Between The Buried And Me and Undying, Glass Casket busts out one hell of a brutal debut record. Truly impressive in terms of technical musicianship, some of this material needs to be heard to be believed. Unfortunately, it suffers from a lack of focus in songwriting that, at times, is crippling.
Metalcore as a genre may be old news these days (and quickly becoming as disposable as the rap-rock subculture of 1998), but Glass Casket do an admirable job of distinguishing themselves by focusing on their death metal and grind tendencies, which are plentiful. In fact, it’s probably more accurate to describe them as a grind or death metal band with some hardcore influences rather than a hardcore band with death and grind obsessions, but that just gets plain confusing. Standout tracks include the kinetically charged opener “Pencil Lead Syringe,” the European death-inspired “Chew Your Fingers” and the slightly more focused and surprisingly melodic approach of “In Between The Sheets.”
Superb technical musicianship that wouldn’t feel outclassed opening for The Dillinger Escape Plan, but as an album We Are Gathered Here Today is ultimately too unfocused to propel Glass Casket to the level that their abilities seem to demand. Just because you’re insanely talented and can compress a bunch of tempo changes, crazy technical riffing and vocal style changes into a single song doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s brilliant. Where Dillinger creates a pseudo-logical progression in this perceived chaos, the majority of this Glass Casket release just comes off sounding somewhat random.
Glass Casket: http://www.glasscasket.com
