AUCKENROSE — Physis (review)

AUCKENROSE — Physis album cover EP · 2011 · Deathcore Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
The Block
Inhale Silence

Rhode Island death metalcore act Auckenrose formed in early 2009 and this is their first release since then. Starting out as a solo project, Auckenrose soon developed into a complex, and very good three piece band. Metalcore is definitely not one of my favorite genres, and I don’t end to look into much from the genre, but Auckenrose put “Physis” up for free download and how could I refuse? Today it is important for people to hear your music so that they can get to know your band, especially when you’re a newer band such as Auckenrose. By doing so bands get a wide audience and I hope that is what happens here.

The music on “Physis” is very sound and compliments the vocals well. This EP reminds me a lot of Between the Buried and Me’s “The Great Misdirect”. Not only does Auckenrose sound similar to them, but the format of the EP is quite similar also. “Physis” starts out with a cool, slow track, ‘Inhale Silence’ much the same as “The Great Misdirect starts out with a slower song, ‘Mirrors’. ‘Inhale Silence’ is a very cool track that is different from all the others on the EP. Not only is it all instrumental, featuring great guitar work from Daniel Tonski, but it isn’t metalcore at all. After the first couple of seconds this becomes quite self evident and the song eventually takes on an alternative metal sound, which is really cool.

The rest of the album is pretty standard metalcore, with great drumming from Andrew Lima and also some nice bass licks. An out of the ordinary thing that I picked up was the interesting jazz section on ‘Cognitive Dissonance’. That really added flavor to the album, cleanly dividing the heavier ‘Awakening (Your Truth)’ and the almost death metal ‘Archaea’. One thing about this album though is the vocals. While I don’t hate them, I definitely think they could be improved on. They seem a bit muddled, I don’t know if this is because of the production or not, but that is my one complaint.

As I just said the production is one downside of this EP. Granted, it was put up for free download and all that, but I would’ve appreciated more zing, or power, from the guitars. Also, as I said before, the vocals could be brought higher up in the mix because they are a bit muffled.

Besides from those production issues, though, this EP is a great start for Rhode Island metalcore band Auckenrose. Combining great death/metalcore sound similar to Between the Buried and Me and softer less intrusive metal, Auckenrose has put out an EP that is not only good, but free. For this release Auckenrose gets 3 stars, but I can see future releases easily eclipsing this one.
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