Dissentient
“As I’m sifting through the pieces of the rubble
I have always known forgiveness
I have always had a heart
But you pushed me into dark
Now watch it all fall apart”
– Casey Tyson-Pearce/Mike Greenwood (Vocalists for Angelmaker)
Since 2011 Angelmaker has been pushing the through the ranks in the deathcore scene with six albums published by AngelMaker Records. In 2015 Angelmaker released their sixth album called Dissentient. This album was the first one I listened to when I discovered the band on a top ten heaviest bands list. After listing to this glorious album hundreds of times I have my own thoughts about what Angelmaker has done within this album. Overall I really enjoyed the album probably a eight out of ten if I had to give it a rating. I thought that the first song titled Godless was a good choice as an intro song. Literally in the first ten seconds Casey and Mike (the lead vocalists) come out with this deep and raspy growl (chocolate milk singing as my dad likes to call it) that can make the hair on the back of your neck stand straight up, now that is how you make an entrance. At one minute and forty seconds in the song the tone changes into a rich, deep, and instrumentally quiet verse, while still having great instrumentals. Angelmaker turns the instrumentals down a bit and it is less of a heavy and fierce moment in the song. I believe Angelmer wanted us to know that this verse was an important one and one that they wanted fans of their music to hear. The last ten seconds of Godless you can feel the drums vibrating through your veins as the double bass drum and snares really pulsate through to the end and help lead it to the conclusion. Many more great songs like No Haven, Into Oblivion, and A Dark Omen are also apart of this album and you should definitely go check them out. If you do enjoy Godless you should listen to the entire album and really get a feel for the talent that this group has and potential we will hopefully get to see one day in the future.
After listening to the album multiple times and looking at the specific lyrics of each song, I have to say that the best songs of the Dissentient album are Leech and Citadel. From the very first few seconds you know straight away that Leech is going to be an amazing song. It opens with the band yelling about how their enemy is a coward and how they sucked the life out of the band members. The song sounds very original in its composition and the use of a wide range of octaves and growls really makes this a solid song that just makes you wanna headbang a bit. It is no surprise that this is the song Angelmaker chose to use with their official lyrical video. That’s right, only a lyrical video. The song truly speaks for itself and tells us what is going on throughout the song as the lyrics progress. The video is so diverse with the camera angels switching to different portions of the album cover and really making you feel like yeah this is a real place. The use of 3D with the album cover and the lyricals really made it look like the words were there in that location. The chorus is just a real headbanger like, even if you just discovered Angelmaker you will be able to mosh and headbang to this chorus. A little side note, that I found Leech to be really true in the sense that their are people out there who will leech onto you and drain the life out of you. People who will use you for their benefit and honestly that’s just wrong. Its happen to me recently and i’ve seen it first hand and it never ends well. I’m glad we have bands like this that spread messages through their music about stuff that people really do go through and specifically in this song, the aftermath.
Now Citadel is a totally different song compared to Leech because this song is only an instrumental. Angelmaker really stepped up to the plate with this song and made it really likable as an instrumental only song. The acoustic guitar really solidified the song and I feel it truly pulled it all together. Using an acoustic is very unconvention in the deathcore scene because a majority of what you hear is electric guitar that is used. Angelmaker has worked magic incorporating it all together and making it sound as complete and good Citidel does. It all just runs so smoothly together and in the end it’s a song that has no lyrics, but you can really headbang and jam out to this song. Citadel is definitely one of my favorite and one of the best songs on that entire album. The initial calm really gets you prepared for the storm that takes over the song, while the tempo increases you can feel that something is going to happen with the instrumentals. A really amazing instrumental that has no comparison or equal at the moment. I hope this is a new step in the right direction for instrumental only songs in the world of deathcore. A step that will lead to more progression and more heavy instrumentals as well as more different styles of instrumentals.
I love this album but nothing is perfect and this album is no exception. I really feel like this album had some bad songs and I have a few reasons why. When Dissentient came on (the song is on the album cover for pete’s sake, if it’s going on the cover it better be good) I was really disappointed in Angelmaker due to the similarities between that song and Godless. The drums were so similar through Dissentient and even the way the song was set up was very similar to Godless. What I mean is that Godless had a few quiet instrumental parts and they were great, but what they should have done was change it to feel more like Into Oblivion (another song of the album). It felt to me more like a Godless Part two or just a version they edited out of the final Godless version that is on the album. They used the quiet instrumentals but, they changed it up with the guitars and even the drum rhythm was changed which made it sound unique. Another song that really should have had many more takes or changes before it hit the album was E.L.E like wow, that song was awful. The lyrics are not the issue. The issue is the way Angelmaker designed the instrumentals around the lyrics and the order in which they chose to do it. For example, in the lines “They molded our minds to excel our creation” and “But have you ever wondered if they left us to burn” they were so lacking. The lines that come before these lines are actually cool and exciting but then Angelmaker lets you down and forces it all into this small time frame. I think it ruined the intro of the song and nothing after that really seemed that good the more I slided to it. I would have also changed the order of the album like switching Into Oblivion with No Haven or E.L.E. That is just one solution that I thought of that could have possibly improved the album over all for the better.
Citations:
https://angelmaker.bandcamp.com/album/dissentient
Posted on 1/16/2020
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