Unearth
““The Stings of Conscience””
(Eulogy Recordings)
Immediately the listener is kicked with this demented skipping whine and stuttering drums before the bark scrapes through and I knew this was going to be crushing ride. The first surprise was the use of Euro-tinged duel metal guitars that bled out of just menacing guitar chunk and drone. While the kids in the Midwest indulge on metals bastard commercial hybrids (Limp indeed), bands like Unearth and a slew of east coast bands and taking the heavy chunk of metal and pushing it with some punked core attitudes. The end result is this metallic punk with singers doing their best tear out their throat vocals. What Unearth has done was taken the guitars and infected them with their creator’s undoubted Black and old school metal ideals (think Iron Maiden solos with a more contemporary aggression, especially the run in the middle of “Only the People”). This is the kind of metal where the pit is still mean and the security can’t do jack about it. The title track starts out with a blistering picking guitar sliced apart by chunk-chunk-chunk accents and Judas Priest guitar break downs make it worthy of the cover. This album also has a way of not repeating itself within its own formula, many times on the first listen I had to stop and rewind a section as “The Strings of Conscience” succeeds in giving each song distinction (except for the vocals, which are 90% a static aggressive bark, but not lacking for the genre). People who think metal went hairspray, died and only came back in the form of the rap de jour really need to open their ears and dig a bit. Unearthed should appeal to the core kids in the teen clubs today as well as any Pantera/Slayer kid from the 80’s. And with that distinct dual guitar 80’s classic metal hitch (but just a dash, this is still primarily crushing riffage) Unearth should find their mark if the metal masses pay attention.
