Add 90’s hardcore and metalcore, a dose of thrash metal, Max Cavalera-esque vocals, and the sludge metal of Crowbar. What do you get? Left Behind’s new full-length album, Seeing Hell. It’s a release that successfully marries all these various genres together into a volatile concoction.
As someone who’s been listening to hardcore since his early teens, I’ll be one to admit it’s not the easiest thing to be original or fresh in this genre. The last release that really brought a feeling to my heart was Pendulum Swings by Expire. But this changed on April 8th, 2016. On that day, West Virginia’s own Left Behind unleashed to the world their debut full length, Seeing Hell.
Seeing Hell is hard to define in itself, so hardcore will do – but Left Behind isn’t a conventional hardcore band. The various styles and oddities that comprise Left Behind’s fairly unique sound on this album make it quite a ride. Opening up with the debut singles of the album, “Headhunter” and “Rock Bottom”, the band gives listeners no quarter, jumping straight into heavy, pissed off riffing. In fact, the latter of those two tracks will remind listeners of Harm’s Way and Earth Crisis’ first record, Destroy The Machines. Frontman Zachary Hatfield’s mid-toned and low yells complete the pure rage of the sound. Seeing Hell is an unrelenting monster, and track after track I was even more impressed with combination of metallic riffs, feedback, and crashing breakdowns. Then I hit “Vexed”. This track (along with “Sink”), are haunting hardcore tracks that are just layered with eerie clean vocals, adding a very somber, yet still very menacing tone to the album. It also helps the album’s diversity. The track “Snakes” features Brian Harris of Knocked Loose, which I was unaware of until hearing his trademark high yells.
It’s difficult to give a comprehensive comparison for Seeing Hell, and Left Behind’s approach in general. If you took thrash tones, early metalcore, Sepultura’s Chaos AD album, lots of nights staying up pissed off, and about forty five steel graters, and ground it all up into a consistent mix, that would be Left Behind’s Seeing Hell. Scoring this album, is in my opinion, something that is better left undone. There’s plenty of bands doing the whole unoriginal and boring beatdown/downtempo deathcore thing today, and thankfully, Left Behind has nothing to do with it. They’re so much better than the kind of style, anyway. Left Behind have finally found a thread that suits them well.
Listen to Seeing Hell On Spotify:
Left Behind:
https://www.facebook.com/LeftbehindHC
http://merchnow.com/catalogs/left-behind
