Metalcore is in a fit state. Whether it’s the seemingly endless slate of albums from new and established bands, or simply Lorna Shore’s digital dominance over the past couple of years, the case could be made that public appetite for metalcore hasn’t been this strong since the 2010 heyday of Bring Me The Horizon, Parkway Drive and Architects, et al.
Nowadays, the genre as a whole seems to have gotten a lot heavier, and flying the flag for the UK in the brutal stakes is Leeds-based five-piece Veiled, who are set to release their debut EP ‘The Black Rite’ this week. Formerly known as ISOLATE, the band donned their new name and released a pair of standalone singles last year, generating a healthy dose of buzz about them; their razor sharp brutality threatening to pounce from the shadows of their viral contemporaries and add to the melee with furious intent.
‘The Black Rite’ opens with dramatic, gothic pianos on ‘The Discovering’. Pounding drums join the fray and it all builds to an explosion of malicious metalcore; writhing tendrils of jagged guitars, throat-shredding vocals and ballistic blast beats decimate the landscape, before a pit call of “Come. With. Us.” truly lays waste to the surveyable surroundings like a nuke has detonated in your earphones.
‘Recusant’ follows with down-tuned, crunching riffs before trying to take flight with a big chorus, but between the dual-aspect vocals, the frenetic guitar work and generally trying to have too much of an impact, the wheels feel like they start to fall off a little bit. ‘Confession’ continues a similar pattern that has the powerful vocals feeling like a chore at times, even if the swirling maelstrom of brutal metalcore and orchestral accents has flashes of genuine brilliance.
Lead single ‘Relinquished’ nails the formula more cohesively though and stands head and shoulders above the rest of this EP as the highlight. Featuring Kyle Lamb of She Must Burn, the track is a compact juggernaut, doling out punishing sounds in a shade under three minutes. The restless assault of the verses is as crushing as it deserves to be, and the soaring choruses give fans something to really get hold of. If we’re splitting hairs, the lyricism is perhaps a bit light-touch, a bit like we have heard this sentiment of ‘kill me so I’m free of this world’ one too many times before, but musically and performatively, it’s sound.
In the end though, ‘The Black Rite’ feels like an EP that has come a touch too late. Fine on its own but a minnow compared to their peers in both scope and content, Veiled has produced an EP that draws together components we have heard a thousand times and doesn’t add a whole lot to it, nor does it go extreme enough so as to stay in line with some of the genre’s brightest sparks. That being said, Veiled has laid an intriguing foundation. The cement is down and the blueprints are drawn up, but as to what will actually be built, we just have to wait and see.
JACK TERRY