ALBUM REVIEW: Life’s Cold Grasp – Domain
There’s more than gators in the water in South Florida at the moment. The bottom chunk of the Sunshine State has made some of the most essential contributions to the world of metallic hardcore as far back as the days of the legendary POISON THE WELL and MORNING AGAIN, and it continues to give generously in the likes of ENVISION, EPHEMERAL and today’s focus of attention DOMAIN. As if where they come from wasn’t enough of a selling point, the five-piece’s debut full-length Life’s Cold Grasp is released via DAZE – a label that simply doesn’t deal in bad records and one that certainly doesn’t break the streak here.
Admittedly DOMAIN’s sound isn’t all Florida, so to speak; there is definitely a bit of the aforementioned MORNING AGAIN in here, as well as a decent dollop of death metal which was of course perfected in the state in the late 80s and early 90s, but there’s also loads of KICKBACK and HATEBREED and H8000 and basically all manner of classic influences that the band have thrown together to produce a serious contender for the best ‘proper’ metalcore record – and surely the best metalcore full-length – of the year so far.
Of course, with its roots as visible as they are it follows that Life’s Cold Grasp doesn’t exactly move goalposts. This album probably could have come out in the late 90s or early 00s and made plenty of sense to the average metal(lic hard)core listener of the time, and yet as the very best of these bands always do DOMAIN have found a way of making a tried and tested formula feel fresh and urgent and visceral. The production of MAGNITUDE guitarist Anthony Burke helps a lot with this, the record taking on that kind of crisp and spacious mix that characterises the work of Burke’s own band where everything clearly holds its own place whilst still feeling locked in with everything else.
It all culminates in ten slices of hateful, furious, breathless metallic hardcore that make light work of a 27-minute runtime. Opener Victory In Slaughter features the late and legendary Pete Kowalsky of REMEMBERING NEVER (another of South Florida’s finest) and immediately sets a standard of savagery from which there is no let-up at least until the moody intro to sixth track Chaos Reigns permits the tiniest of breathers. The first half leading up to that is all killer – as is the second really – the blast beats and city-levelling breakdown of fourth track Ballad Of Fallen Man marking something of a highlight even as the quality of all that surrounds it refuses to falter.
There are other notable guests too – Tyler Mullen of SCARAB on lead single Spores Of Industry, the inimitable Scott Vogel of TERROR on the unforgiving Suffer To Believe, and a particularly maniacal turn from Tom Sheehan of INDECISION on the album’s penultimate track Corrode – but the band’s own vocalist Alex Rothberger is never outshone by such stellar company. He’s got a proper rapturous bellow that becomes a full death metal yowl at points and he uses it to express frustration at everything from religion to scene politics to the relentless grind of capitalism. The lyrics themselves are absolutely worth digging into too – all bleak and poetic and often tinged with religious and apocalyptic imagery that suits the sound really well.
Having jumped the gun a few paragraphs ago, Life’s Cold Grasp is outstanding. Obviously DOMAIN are far from the only band to have blurred – or at least re-blurred – the line between metalcore and metallic hardcore in recent years, but with an effort like this they have quickly secured themselves a place among the very best of them.
Rating: 9/10
Life’s Cold Grasp is set for release on March 8th via DAZE.
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