The Concealers

Once in a while, you hear an album that is so horrid that it makes you go: “I just want to kill myself, or failing that, kill the fuckers that released this album”. This is not one of those. I had never heard this band before, but "The Concealers" completely floored me. The riffs. The arrangements. The musicianship. The urgency. The penis. Hot bananas, in other words.

Before I heard “The Concealers”, I had for some reason gotten the impression that Dååth (yes, Scandinavian fucken å‘s though they’re American) played metalcore. It must have something to do with the ramblings of random internjetz dorks who label anything containing melodies and/or catchy choruses as metalcore. What we have here is melodic death/groove metal with a mix of catchy and stompy riffs, fast double bass drumming and blast beats, catchy and haunting melodies, techy/proggy rhythms and riffs, catchy growl phrases… you notice a pattern in there? No? Let me spell it to you: C-A-T-fucking-C-H-Y. That’s what this disc is all about. And I love it. And it’s still not fucking metalcore, jerks.

There’s not one dull moment on “The Concealers”; the constant changes between fast and heavy, melodious and thrashy, grind and stomp etc keep the listener interested. Everything is efficiently arranged so every extra shit thrown in really makes a splash, like for example the vocal effects in the first chorus’ ending on “Silenced” or the pumping sledgehammer bass on the verse of “Self-Corruption Manifesto”. Gotta mention the opening of “The Worthless” too: dreamy guitar intro followed up by a slow build-up (containing parts of riffs to be heard later on in the song) up until the one minute mark and… BAM. Enter double kicks – enter kick-ass riff. Enter super-sized erection. ‘Nuff said.

What stands completely clear of all doubts is that these guys are extremely talented musicians. Lone remaining founder, axeman Eyal Levi, studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston together with the two other founding members vocalist Sean Farber and keyboardist Mike Kameron, who were both out of the band by "The Concealers". I have no record of the other musicians’ Berklee attendance, but man oh man can they play. Drummer Talley is known from several other bands such as Dying Fetus, Misery Index and Black Dahlia Murder; but other than him, no other current band member had been part of any known acts. This is mildly disturbing, as they kind of just suddenly appeared; but it is also nice to see that not every musician in the world needs millions of side projects to keep them inspired and creative.

The key here is that their exceptional skills are put to good use. The songs are the center of attention. The techy/proggy parts and blast sections play their roles perfectly and give the simpler riffs more oomph, and give the album a more varied aura. Guitar solos are to be found aplenty, even a cool jazzy one, but they all make the songs more prominent and they’re only pulled out when needed.

I am actually at a loss trying to find something bad to say about this record. 101 of 100 good records always have something that doesn’t exactly fit one’s taste; be it the rhythms, melodies, chord progressions, vocals, drum patterns, production, dynamics, arrangements, whatever – here it all sounds fucking ace. This is absolutely one of the better records I’ve heard in the last few years. The only thing that keeps the score down is the fact that this genre isn’t my favorite, atmospherically speaking. There are lots of gloomy and aggressive moods to be found here, for a melodic death/groove metal record, but it still doesn’t give me all the emotional chills and thrills I need for the highest ratings.

This album, in all senses, is lamer than its predecessor. It's a shift to metal core in many ways.

First of all, the singer has either lost it or just doesn't want to carry on with the older way of singing. He appears to be too weak compared to his own self in the previous album. It almost feels like he's going to burst out singing a melodious chorus the next second. The powerful growling and screaming of the previous album is hardly witnessed here. And this band supposedly being a death metal band should not have considered such a change.

Secondly, the riffs are boring, nothing new, nothing original, just random metal core riffs that take the music nowhere. Thats one of the reasons I have compared their music on this album to that of Trivium in general. The record company, Roadrunner, may have pressurized them to make this change in an attempt to sell more records than focussing on the music itself. But I think they won't succeed in doing anything like that.

And now to the drumming. Kevin's worst ever! Listen to the stuff that he's done with Misery Index or Dying Fetus. This is a lot worse than those days when he used to be a force to reckon with. He has completely mellowed down on this record and does nothing impressive at all. Maybe something to do with his haircut :P. He better grow them back if thats what it takes to get his lost energy back.

This is a record that even the fans of the band will find hard to enjoy. Not essential at all.