August Burns Red – Death Below
Release Date: 24th March 2023
Label: SharpTone Records
Order/Stream
Genre: Metalcore
FFO: Parkway Drive, As I Lay Dying, The Devil Wears Prada.
Review By: Anthony Petitt
With the release of Death Below, August Burns Red will have released 10 studio albums over 20 years (for those like me who are not mathematically inclined, that’s an album every two years for two decades). That level of longevity and prodigiousness is quite the achievement for a band that started out when they were still teenagers! So does Death Below retain the creative spark that made ABR the influential Metalcore act that they are today?
Premonition is the introductory track. Layered guitars create excellent texture under Jake Luhrs speaking-into-yelling vocal. The Cleansing has foot-stomping rhythms that range from blast-beats to Math Rock utilizing the whole kit to a snare heavy Peter Criss-like groove. Both lyrically and musically, the song has an uplifting quality. Ancestry features Jesse Leach from Killswitch Engage, and sports subtle time signature changes throughout. Esteemed guitarist Jason Richardson appears on the next track, Tightrope. It’s the most aggressive, heavy song on the record thus far, and Richardson has a scorching solo smack dab in the middle of it.
The band decides to cool off for a moment at the beginning of Fool’s Gold in the Bear Trap, with some Shoegaze influence. Backfire is a strong showing, with intricate double-bass work on the drums and effective guitar leads. Revival is sure to induce “stank face” with its surgically precise, syncopated guitar riffs tuned lower than low. The bass gets some great moments to shine in the back-to-back Sevink and Dark Divide, the latter containing the catchy and memorable lyric “War for the sake of war”.
Deadbolt is thrashy, but with a radio-friendly chorus with clean vocals. It feels a little out of place on this record, as there’s no other song like it to be found. But this slight misstep (if it even is one) is forgotten when the final song Reckoning appears. Everything on this song is super technical, especially the guitars, and it shows that August Burns Red aren’t phoning it in, even ten records deep. 
(4 / 5)
