Jacknife
Moment of Reckoning
7.3
In my recent War of Ages review, I talked about the saturation of the metalcore genre and what separates an average metalcore album from a good metal core album. While that album resided in the mediocre side of things, here is an entry into the above average category from Dallas’ Jacknife. Now this isn’t the next Prayer for Cleansing, Heartscarved or even Hatebreed, but what they have done is mixed hardcore and metal in perfect straight-forward amounts to create an entertaining if unoriginal record.
While mostly a burly thrashing record, Jacknife manages to throw in some nice solos, a few dual harmonies and choruses to keep things out of the realms of the purely hardcore. The ensuing Unearth meets Hatebreed meets All Out War concoction sounds appropriately contrived, but with the help of some memorable song writing is slightly more than a metalcore retread. Joe Ortitz has a more straight up hardcore snarl with a few death metal growls thrown in and there’s no emo whining, the guitars are robust and suitably astride hardcore crunch and thrash metal bite while the steady but unspectacular rhythm section is suitably low end.
Opening with the more hardcore stomp of “Surrender Never” Jacknife don’t exactly get your attention right off the bat, but the track takes a nice melodic tangent that continues for “Unbreakable” that within its short timeframe gives an impressive array of metalcore melodies and hardcore machismo without forcing either issue. After the rudimentary hardcore misstep of “End of Man”, “A Glimpse of Hell” offers a glimpse of Modern American metal with a monstrous breakdown thrown in for good measure. The general theme of the album seems to be a mix of short sharp hardcore stabs (“End of Man”, “Moment of Reckoning”, “Deception”) and more in depth metalcore tracks like the rather enjoyable “Tears Fall Endless”, the dramatic climax of “Breaking Away”, the snarling thrash of “We the Strong” and the strong builds of “Stand Your Ground (Today We Fight)” and rousing “Our Time has Come”. None mind blowing, but all pretty well done.
When it’s all said and done and the albums over, you realize despites its contrivances, you actually enjoyed it for what it is. And Jacknife seem do be doing their thing without being too overly zealous in either core mantra and focusing on stout, solid song writing. Not too bad guys.
