EP REVIEW: No Rest – Joshua Travis
No Rest is a celebration in collaboration. EMMURE guitarist JOSHUA TRAVIS pulls in a crowded room of features to offer their vocals on his vitriolic new EP, embracing fervent mayhem as the key theme and theoretically allowing each artist to bring their own personal touch to each track. However, with a majority of the five tracks counting two features each, the result is a muddied effort in maximalism, intentionally embracing abrasive soundscapes and long overused metalcore tropes to deliver a substandard record of forgettable tracks.
Recent single Leviathan pairs the ‘never-before-heard’ scream of “You can’t take me down” with brittle panic chords and on the beat breakdown rhythms, and a sudden, uninvited tubular bells outro. Opener Web Of Lies tells the roundabout story of descent into alcoholism after a partner cheats with Andy Cizek’s (of MONUMENTS) nursery rhyme nonsense of “I hear you crying and lying, denying / You’ll never stop till I’m dying, crucifying / Ties that you’ve severed forever, into the nether / Crushing my every endeavour / I’m stuck here waiting, and hating, my spirit breaking.”
Redeemable moments are found in POLARIS frontman Jamie Hails’ Disdain, presenting cut-up chainsaw rhythms and a speed-picking solo over the half-speed breakdown in some of the more complex songwriting on the EP. Hails’ caustic sing-screams bring much-needed melody to the brutal track, which can’t be found on the Jake Wolf (of REFLECTIONS) featuring Parallel that regresses to the bizarre 10s metalcore affinity for vocals-following-guitar rhythm breakdowns.
If Travis’ intention was to capture a tableau of metalcore’s peak, then he did so very well, but for a forward-thinking artist, it seems an odd choice in 2022. There is certainly a fanbase for the frenzied feature-heavy pandemonium that Travis has created, but it mostly feels like he has crowbarred a handful of metalcore stalwarts into half-baked songs and rendered what could have been an impactful SEEYOUSPACECOWBOY throwback approach into something that badly welds the contemporary and a bygone era.
An unusual experiment for sure. No Rest lacks a cohesive identity that could give a project like this any longevity. A massive effort has gone into production and creating an incredible features list, but more resources need to go into concept, goals and thematic cohesion. What could have been a formidable experiment that spearheaded a new wave of metalcore collaboration projects is instead a derivate alloy of Travis’ vision and nine separate collaborators’ interpretations of his ideas.
Rating: 4/10
No Rest is out now via SharpTone Records.
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