As You Left – Silver Chains Golden Veins
Release Date: 15th December 2023
Label: Self Released
Spotify
Genre: Blackened Metalcore
FFO: Thy Art is Murder, Caliban, All Shall Perish, Branch of Sacrifice.
Review By: Jeff Finch
As mentioned in previous reviews, the state of metalcore is always going to be interesting; there are bands that have been doing their thing for damn near twenty years, who know their sound and what makes their fans happy, rarely straying from their wheelhouse. There are other bands who built up a following based on a particular, breakdown heavy sound, but then evolved, in a way, adjusting their sound to the changing musical landscapes. Hell, one of my favorite bands, All Out War, decided to take their hardcore-centric approach and blacken it up a bit with their newest offering Celestial Rot. All this exposition to say that As You Left, the focus of this particular review, while in no capacity reinventing the metalcore wheel, has brought to the table, with Silver Chains – Golden Veins, a ferocious offering combining blackened elements with fast-paced riffs and breakdowns for a fun, headbanging way to near the close of 2023.
As a big fan of black metal, blackened death metal, and metalcore, to name a few, this offering from As You Left appeared to be a perfect album to keep my mind focused on new tunes to close out the last few weeks of the year. And the first track Oblivion confirmed those suspicions; a lengthy build-up consisting of mostly subdued sounds that transition into military-esque drumming does little to prepare us for the onslaught that follows shortly thereafter, a black metal shriek paired with blast beats pulsating out of the speakers before our vocalist goes way down in his delivery, a standard (yet strong) low growl over a breakdown that, while not terribly fancy, is enough to drive the point home that no matter what brand of blackened / metalcore they’re playing, the energy won’t relent. Most of the remainder of the track leaves out the ‘blackened’ but the simple rhythm and the clean guitars are more than adequate to close the track on a strong note.
Blades Turning comes out of the gate with metalcore in mind, the drum fills technical and punchy, the guitar riffs meaty, clean vocals hitting us just past the one-minute mark before that blackened wail takes over, the percussion absolutely pummeling as our vocalist rips his throat apart before brilliantly transitioning back into the metalcore wheelhouse without missing a step. Along with our opening track and later cut Throne, Blades Turning showcases this band at their absolute best, transitioning at the snap of a finger, layering vocals, switching tempos, the latter track wowing us with a solo at about the two-thirds point of the track before switching over to a neck breaking mid-tempo breakdown.
Tracks like Surrender are basically full on thrash-core, nothing but speedy riffs, double bass, low shouts shifting into visceral screams, all hitting us from different angles as, before we know it, a solo is dropping to give us time to breathe.
Where this album does falter, in a way, however, is that for a decent stretch of the album, we’re basically treated to a modern metalcore album with clean guitar, some beefy breakdowns, a lot of chugging, and the standard growl, but little else more. The blackened aspects seem to disappear for a great much of the album, which is an odd choice, given how acerbic those first few tracks sound, and how well the transitions into, and out of, those sounds were performed. Granted, the modern metal sound we do hear for these tracks is solid, the melodies well written, the percussion still powerful, but the inherent lack of variety at points is disappointing after a really strong start.
All things considered, though, this album really does a good job at displaying the talent of the band members; our vocalist sounds like no fewer than three separate people, with how well he transitions into and out of various sounds, while the percussion is almost non-stop in its ferocity, the riffs working in tandem to create a soundscape of very good, if not almost great, metal with a lot of melody. Were the group to have introduced a bit more variety into more of the album, this could have been a late year contender for some lists, as the album proves that we’re dealing with a group of musicians that are truly gifted and are more than capable of producing top-notch blackened metalcore.
(4 / 5)
