ALBUM REVIEW: A Digital Nowhere – Profiler
For Bristol’s Mike Evans, Friday February 16th is a truly monumental day, because four years of grafting are about to pay off. The guitarist and vocalist of nu-metalcore trio PROFILER began the band back in 2020, blending the retro with the modern and finding an immediate home in SharpTone Records. Singles and EPs followed, which took Evans from the studio to the stage, where he was backed by bassist/vocalist Joe Johnson and drummer Oscar Hocking, the initial line-up now complete. When Hocking departed in early 2023, Brad Ratcliffe stepped in behind the kit and it’s this fearsome three who have created A Digital Nowhere, the band’s debut full-length album.
Wearing your heart – or in this case, influences – on your sleeve is a risky business in music, lest you end up sounding like a cheap carbon copy of who you took inspiration from. PROFILER are playing with fire from the off, as first single and album opener All In Forever opens with a cry of “Check, one, two, get up!”, a line that could have easily been uttered by a certain red-capped gentleman from Jacksonville. Appropriately, the song does have a LIMP BIZKIT bounce to it, although the guitars are most definitely crunchier in tone. The other side of PROFILER‘s sound spectrum is encapsulated in Artifice, which leans much further towards the melodic tones of THE AMITY AFFLICTION than it does anything more associated with JNCO jeans and the turn of the millennium.
The other eight songs on A Digital Nowhere fall somewhere in between these extremes – Amino‘s chorus brings to mind LINKIN PARK in their Meteora days, Consumed delves into the slower, more expansive areas of metalcore that BRING ME THE HORIZON did so well on tracks like Sleepwalking and closing track Sequence is a fun curveball, showing that the band are just as adept at music which epitomises the ‘less is more’ ethos, trading breakdowns for more graceful vocal harmonies and still managing a large impact. Outside of these, sadly, there’s not a huge amount that stands out save for a large dose of turntable scratches that, at their best, feel a little forced and unnecessary, as if PROFILER are trying too hard to impress those who listen. It’s always good to make an initial splash on your first long play, of course, but being yourself is just as, if not more, important; metal fans aren’t stupid and can tell when things become more artificial than authentic, and that often leads to a swift change in what they’re listening to.
Make no mistake, there’s some real potential with PROFILER; A Digital Nowhere might not shine brightly throughout, but there’s enough going on within its 36 minutes to impress and enjoy. To reach that next level, it’s sometimes worth taking half a step back to ensure one stays true to themselves before it’s too late and their material becomes more of a parody of a bygone era: if PROFILER do that, they’ll see their stock rise significantly in the coming years.
Rating: 6/10
A Digital Nowhere is set for release on February 16th via SharpTone Records.
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