The Eating Cave – The Miscalculation
Release Date: 21st April 2023
Label: Self-Released
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Technical Death Metal.
FFO: Cognitive, Soreption, and Illucinus.
Review By: Eric Wilt
The Eating Cave exploded onto the scene with their debut album Ingurgitate in 2022. At the time, I was seeing Ingurgitate’s uniquely gruesome cover art all over social media, and when I gave it a listen, I found that the music within was as brutal as the artwork on the cover. Falling somewhere on the deathcore side of the death metal spectrum, the songs on Ingurgitate are filled with technical shredding and meaty riffing as well as bass drops and breakdowns. It is unusual to see a band release two albums so closely together—Ingurgitate came out in June of 2022—but the band says that they “have been working on this new record since before Ingurgitate was released,” and with that in mind, I was excited to see what the band had in store on their sophomore release.
The first thing I noticed when I listened to The Miscalculation is that the songs don’t have nearly as much of a deathcore feel these days. It appears that The Eating Cave has moved away from bass drops and breakdowns (at least for the most part) in favor of sick sweeps and some stylish shredding. Songs like Ubiquitous, The Discovery, and Indoctrination are overflowing with slick shredding and sweep picking. While they have moved away from their deathcore roots, that doesn’t mean that they don’t bring the brutal. Implications features a couple beatdown sections that will get the pits going crazy, while Awakening has a mini breakdown towards the beginning of the track. To be honest, Implications and Awakening have some of the tastier shredding too.
The one thing that I questioned about The Eating Cave’s debut was their decision to use programmed drums instead of a real drummer. The drumming matches the songs, but it doesn’t exactly have that live drummer feel. The programmed drums are back on The Miscalculation, but they have a much more organic feel this time around. In fact, if I hadn’t read that the band featured two guitarists (Evan Hope and Tyler Boylan), a vocalist (Thiago Campanhol), and a synth/engineer (Chris Basham), I wouldn’t have guessed that the drums weren’t real.
All in all, The Miscalculation is a worthy successor to Ingurgitate. It includes all of the best parts of their debut album while pushing the technicality even further. Fans of the band will love to see how they have matured in such a short amount of time.
(4 / 5)
