Hereafter An Odyssey
Human Is As Human Does
5.5
While not doing anything particularly unique, Georgia's Hereafter An Odyssey are still infants in metal years. Taking that into consideration, Human Is As Human Does is a fairly promising EP from a band settling a little too comfortably and perhaps a little too early into the oft-hated, hardcore-influenced death metal realm.
Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: This is entirely too chuggy and breakdown-ridden to be death metal. "Enduring The Battle," for example, might as well be a hardcore song. However, there's another element to the Macon quintet that confuses the identity of the EP as a whole. The band's melodic bend separates them from both standard deathcore and pure death metal. If you look at their lineup, they've got two guitarists and they're not afraid to use them. Several passages could even be culled from a Swedish melo-death record.
Unfortunately, Hereafter An Odyssey's musical diversity doesn't always sound cohesive. When it does, such as on the EP's last track, "Next To Clouds," one doesn't notice all those influences because they're not scattered into noticeably exclusive sections (i.e. "here's the breakdown, there goes the Gothenburg worship"). Also, inserting socio-political overtones in music, especially death metal, is tricky these days, and the band lacks the finesse to pull it off here. I found them to be slightly distracting and cheesy. All that said, these guys show some promise but they have got to try harder to find their own niche if they want to get noticed.
