Helpless – Caged In Gold
Release Date: 25th March 2022
Label: Church Road Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Sludge, Grindcore, Technical Death Metal, Noise-Hardcore.
FFO: Sermon of Flames, Yautja, Cult Leader, earlier Gorguts.
Review By: Andy Spoon
Set to release on March 25th, UK’s Helpless brings their underground tech-death-grindcore tones to you in their second LP, the 10-track offering, Caged In Gold, released by Church Road Records.
Track 1, Wraiths of Memory, starts with heavy guitar/bass coming in between right and left stereo channels, before going into an absolutely-wretched binary musical phrase between in and out-of-tune while blast beats and intense vocals barrel through the sound mix. The pace is blistering, drums keeping the pace fast on the super-fast ¾ to 6/8 swing, and then to 4/4. The song breaks down to a low growling vocal section with metric toms and guitar chugging into a vamp and guitar lead, all speeding back up and increasing in intensity before one final breakdown, crescendo’d by the initial wild and crazy musical phrasing from the intro.
Track 2, the Empty Gesture is a wild and pounding dissonant thrashy headbanger with howling, screeching guitars and drums pushing the speed from the snare, not the double bass, which gives a layer to the rhythm that makes the listener pay avid attention to the tight drum licks.
Track 3, Suppression starts with a speedy snare-backed build-up that leads to a chaotic and heavy song flow dotted with growling, angsty vocals in the low-mid register, leading to a half-time breakdown that is drool-worthy. The song features heavy chugging from the guitar offset by the high screeches and intense during the breakdown towards the end ⅓ of the track. It’s easy to see how the album conveys a sense of the wildness that the tech death genre is so well-known for.
Track 4, Another Sunlight, is absolutely just as fast, scorching the listener’s ears with a brutal, slamming, fast pulse. Dissonant guitar chords are really the coup de grace of Helpless’ sound, as the driving bass guitar and drums yield back for the guitars to eerily howl the atmosphere into existence. Another Sunlight takes a great OSDM turn in the second half, breaking the speed down with a blackened, wallowing cascade of whole notes and heavy cymbal crashes.
Track 5, Single File, takes over from the end of Another Sunlight, starting at half-time. After the first 4 tracks, the change of pace hits the listener dramatically, making them wonder what is coming next. Slowing down even more into just a hollow and haunting drum build, the song then picks up and morphs into a dark and dramatic post-metal interlude with few vocals. It is moody. I like how it separates movements in the record, given the absolute top fuel pace of the first 4 tracks.
Track 6, Time Worship, starts with a heavy bass riff, followed by a big roll-up with guitars and drums into another chaos-driven prog/tech instrumental sequence. The riffs are reminiscent of Gorguts and Sermon of Flames, whose guitars are so-reliant on the dissonant and suspended chords that just reach into the blackened spectrum. The balance of the dissonant with the traditional death metal melodic patterns create a series of movements back and forth that highly-enhance the “structured chaos” vibe of Caged in Gold, obviously something that the band definitely wants to come across. Time Worship is one of the more musical tracks on the album thus far, and is one of those tracks that both your left and right brain hemispheres can enjoy.
Track 7, Focus Group Extraction, comes back after what feels like a shift in energy to the same early intensity from the beginning of the album. Vocal extremity is peak on this song with absolutely crushing intensity and power. There is obviously hints of thrash and early death metal in the rhythm guitar section with the drums. A minute in, the out-of-tune elements come back in to swing back in a 6/8 time section. Vocals remain vividly-maniacal through the transitions back and forth between 4 and 6 time signatures, leading back into a double-time apex, leading the listener into a maelstrom of noise metal that is 100% a kick in the teeth.
Track 8, Unseen Servant, starts with absolute thrashy rage, making its whole time in less than 2 minutes, something that is harder to do when making a whole cohesive album. However, it continues that same pace of being so intense and dark at the same time. The total sound manages to stay super thick and rich through the recording, making the three-piece band feel like something much bigger, using the noise elements to puff-up the ambience of the tone in a much wider soundstage.
Track 9, Simulacrum, brings that pace down slightly, coming back down to half-time on guitars and drums while the bass guitar absolutely shreds away before exploding into the blast beat-backed verse. The first breakdown in a while is a groovy ⅞ time signature sequence, followed by yet another blistering final segment with the binary guitar loop under double or triple vocal, which are rhythmic and percussive.
The final track, The Great Silence, is not the ideal way to end Caged in Gold, as it starts in harmonious time with the rest of the second movement of the album. Still, after 2 minutes, The Great Silence does break into a scorching breakdown in what feels like quarter time. The vocal sections thicken up with voluminous reverb as the guitar and bass drone on in long, dramatic whole notes, ultimately resigning the album to a long fade-out that ends after 4:40 on the track. I have mixed feelings about how quickly the song shifted between super-fast, and then extremely slow. Perhaps Helpless could have used a revamp of earlier thematic phrasing to “tie it all together”, but no such luck.
All together, Caged in Gold is a solid, grungy offering that will absolutely hold its own in the hardcore world in 2022. With elements of tech death, prog, and grindcore, Helpless have managed to produce an album that stays true to the sludgy and chaotic hardcore genre, while dancing the line with OSDM and some blackened elements courtesy of some wild guitar work. Overall, the three-piece, three vocalist, band from the UK satisfies holistically with Caged in Gold. 
(3 / 5)
