ALBUM REVIEW: No One Goes To Heaven – Left Behind
Carving out a unique sound yourself is hard. Especially in a niche as saturated as ours currently is. With so many bands borrowing so many ideas from one another, cookie cutter bands erupting from left, right, and centre, being able to confidently own your sound and become instantly recognisable is a winner. LEFT BEHIND have been well on their way to doing just that, as they combine dirty southern stoner with hardcore to create what is a genuinely interesting noise that has been honed pretty well over their short career. Blessed By The Burn was a depressing and oppressive listen, and the group seem to have taken the best bits and done there best to transfer them over to their doomiest collection of songs yet.
No One Goes to Heaven is as abrasive as it’s title suggest, and it opens with a rager with another impressively intense title. Hell Rains From Above is the perfect opener for this record, as the thick tones and squealing riffs come out in droves to deliver an impressive opening statement. LEFT BEHIND have a swagger about them that gives their suffocating assault a real bit of character. It is, by a large, one of the main reasons they have become such a unique entity within the genre, given their bluesy, deep south groove that runs heavily within the guitars, drums, and vocals.
And the band prove themselves to be pretty damn good at writing songs too. Peeling Wax is a catchy and bouncy time, and Throwing Stones devolves into an emotionally charged and deeply angry ending, and instantly becomes one of the albums early highlights. The record feels to be top loaded with the better tracks of the album, and the record does become to overstay its welcome towards the end of its run time. There are certainly enough tracks to call this a good time, but towards the final few songs the momentum feels all but used up. The ironic bit is that towards the end of the record is when LEFT BEHIND begin to play around with dynamics a bit more, slowing it down in order to really flex their musical muscles. There are still explosive displays of heaviness, but these are hit and miss as to whether they’ll drag you back into the listening experience.
No One Goes To Heaven is a bit of an unsettling time from start to finish. If you can throw yourself into the bleak and oppressive lyrical content, there is a lot to enjoy with LEFT BEHIND in general. Their doomy, stoner sound couples perfectly with their hardcore influence, and on this record, when they hit their stride, LEFT BEHIND really hit the nail on the head. However, as the record continues, the ideas become a bit too cumbersome to maintain the full intensity that the first half of No One Goes To Heaven achieves. But even so, for anyone looking for an alternative to the mass produced sounds of metalcore, hardcore, and the like, then LEFT BEHIND are the band for you.
Rating: 6/10
No One Goes To Heaven is out now via Pure Noise Records.
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