ALBUM REVIEW: Breathing Through The Wound – Splitknuckle

“Die in a mile high pile of shit / If God exists I pray he fuckin’ gets you gone quick / I don’t know what it is that makes you dickheads like this / Get fucked cunt, eat shit.” SPLITKNUCKLE certainly aren’t going to lose any marks for aggro – not that anyone familiar with their track record would expect them to. With those words the Essex metallic hardcore five-piece bring in the first crushing breakdown on their new album Breathing Through The Wound – on a track called Fuck Your Whole Life no less – and thus the standard is set for a good 40-minute bludgeoning to follow.

To state the obvious, this album is straight up hostile. Musically the band draw heavy influences from death metal, beatdown and even a touch of deathcore and fuse them into ten tracks that major on serrated metallic riffing, thick mid-tempo grooves and, of course, a litany of frankly ridiculous breakdowns that could each go blow with that of the opener. Lyrically, vocalist Joey Drake brings the venom to match, particularly in the first half of the record which sees shots fired at everyone from backstabbers close to home (“We share blood, not love”) to the usual big picture suspects like corrupt politicians and warmongers (“I will wait to bite the hand that feeds”).

Sensibly though, Breathing Through The Wound doesn’t spend all of its time in the red, even if that is where SPLITKNUCKLE seem happiest. We Share Blood (Not Love) and Stay Keeping Count are the longest tracks on the record and both touch on something a little more epic and melodic with lengthy intros and greater dynamic variation, and there’s even a full detour into the kind of moody metal ballad one might expect of a certain bunch of racist Texan groove metallers in the album’s seventh track Gethsemane. Moments like these serve the album really well, particularly as the overall runtime is probably a good ten minutes longer than a lot of bands like this can often get away with.

There are lyrical shifts too, the rage and despair of the first half of the record giving way to reflections on personal progress and commitment to self in the title track which kicks off the second. Later, Essex Kings celebrates the scene the band call home, replete with a fitting second appearance from Andy Baz of the legendary RAIDEN, while they pay even further tribute to their heritage not only in the aforementioned Stay Keeping Count but also with a killer cover of The Sickness by Chelmsford’s SPECIAL MOVE to round things out.

Really though it does all come back to the aggro. Breathing Through The Wound is as mean as they come; it snaps from one savage, jagged riff to the next and each hits just as hard as that which came before, and it’s padded out with just enough other stuff to ensure that it remains thoroughly compelling to the very end. The UK hardcore scene is in fantastic health at the moment and here is irrefutable proof that SPLITKNUCKLE should be counted among its most respected leaders.

Rating: 8/10

Breathing Through The Wound is set for release on January 12th via DAZE/Northern Unrest.

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