ALBUM REVIEW: The Wretched; The Ruinous – Unearth
Chances are, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect from a new UNEARTH album. Neck-snapping groove? Check. Melodeath-inspired leads? Check. Towering riffs that hit like battering rams, gravelly vocals that sound like they’re being bellowed by an entire army and pit-ready breakdowns? Check, check and check. The Wretched; The Ruinous is all of that, and resolutely nothing more. This isn’t a criticism; UNEARTH are a known quantity by now. The New England metalcore quintet have long fused Swedish melodeath along with American thrash and a healthy dose of hardcore, becoming standard bearers for the at the time burgeoning American metalcore scene they helped pioneer.
On this, their eighth outing, they change absolutely nothing that worked before. The Wretched; The Ruinous is a relatively tight 37 minutes, packed with their now-trademark groove and savagery, all delivered with the same conviction as they had at their formation in 1998, tempered and flavoured by their years of experience on the road. Opening with the title track, it’s the classic double pedal kick drum into pit-inciting riff and the chorus is as ever heavily influenced by that early 2000s IN FLAMES sound with twin leads and bellowed vocals. Sure it’s a little loose at over four minutes and the gang chants of “no heroes” veer a little close to overwrought territory but those are thankfully brief.
After that, it’s UNEARTH by numbers; Cremation Of The Living swarms into ears with its blistering pace that then shifts into beatdown hardcore territory for an early battering and back to charging melodeath. There’s an undercurrent of technicality to the writing that’s easy to miss in the gleeful pit violence that echoes 2014’s Watchers Of Rule that adds an extra layer to the writing and gives repeat listens extra value rather than simply for the sheer amount of fun UNEARTH sound like they’re having.
Mother Betrayal is more brooding, a moody guitar melody opening it that unfurls into menacing gang vocals and a practically doomy pace by UNEARTH standards. Obviously this pace doesn’t last and it’s soon back to breakneck business as usual, but that atmosphere lingers throughout, while closer Theaters Of War is the band at their most violent. It brings in those heavy hardcore elements for a cataclysmic opening beatdown and refuses to let up the aggro from then.
Having declared they took the entire pandemic to write these songs as an exploration of what UNEARTH has been and is now (virtually the same, let’s be honest), The Wretched; The Ruinous delivers everything you’d want from UNEARTH. It’s fun, it’s powerful, it’ll be a blast to pit to and it’s performed with a gusto and self-belief that comes from years of hard work and their deserved place as one of the originators of the scene. Any criticism of the band not changing their sound is moot at this point; they deliver exactly what’s expected of them, and The Wretched; The Ruinous is another dependably solid slab of American metalcore from one of its earliest standard bearers.
Rating: 7/10
The Wretched; The Ruinous is set for release on May 5th via Century Media Records.
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