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Dance Club Massacre > Circle of Death > Reviews
Dance Club Massacre - Circle of Death

A Step Into Black/Deathcore - 60%

Shirt_Guy, January 26th, 2009

Many knew this trend was coming a mile away, which is to say metalcore heavily influenced by black metal. Bleeding Through have had that influence for a long time, and Abigail Williams have crossed that boundary from a metalcore related band to pure black metal - though I’m sure elitists would argue otherwise due to their haircuts.

Compared to Dance Club Massacre’s previous album, “Feast of the Blood Monsters”, which was just a loose, disjointed mess of ideas with keyboards that go nowhere, while on “Circle of Death” they’ve morphed into blackened post-deathcore. Yup, that’s right, metalcore has gotten so many permutations that I need to make up titles that long. Why add the “post” to the metalcore tag? It’s for those bands that have basically ditched breakdowns, and even a few other -core elements from their sound, yet still carry over everything else from the previous metalcore entity to prevent them from becoming full-on melodic death metal, or death metal or whatnot. Dance Club Massacre certainly has the significant carryover from deathcore, such as basically stuffing in a lot of Smith blasts, adds in a Black Dahlia Murder like rasp, the the harmonized deathcore/faux death metal growls, and a hint of black metal harshness in the guitar tone, all backed up by keyboards going through most black metal keyboard staples. It’s all wrapped up with humour, right down to the 50’s horror movie whine used in one song - which was actually unexpected and extremely cool!

Unfortunately the album is also dragged down by a hint of looseness, which works against the band in this case due to the generally good recording. The snare drum tends to pop like a can a little bit, and when not covered by the guitars, those keyboards are at least two notches down from sounding like real instruments. The other lacking element is the sincerity, as you don’t quite feel the band selling their passion for black metal and humour at the same time. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that those two elements normally clash. All that said, “Circle of Death” is still a huge leap forward from their previous album, “Feast of the Blood Monsters”. Perhaps all that’s needed is some more road time and to cannibalize some of the more creative black metal bands out there to leave any semblance of deathcore behind, as many deathcore bands are already abandoning ship before the whole genre implodes on itself.

Originally posted at www.waytooloud.com