A Breath Before Surfacing
Death Is Swallowed In Victory
4.6
Quick! Name a technically proficient deathcore band from Arizona. My guess is 90% of you said “Uhh… What?” while the other 10% more than likely said Job For A Cowboy. With their debut, Death is Swallowed in Victory, these gents from Tucson are out to make you scream “A BREATH BEFORE SURFACING!” next time you are asked that question… which will assuredly be never.
Contrasting high/low screams, frenzied dual-guitars, overly triggered machine-like drums, bass drops, breakdowns? Yup, this is deathcore alright. Is it good enough to dethrone JFAC as Arizona’s kings of core? Not any time soon. Is it good enough to get kids with asymmetrical haircuts to try to tear each other apart? Sure, but what isn't these days? Will anyone care about this band/album five or six years from now? Extremely unlikely. Will anyone care in five or six weeks? Does anyone care now?
To be fair to the band, these guys know their way around their instruments, they play some pretty heavy tunes, and they named their intro track “Summoning The Lord Of The Pit” which is pretty cool. Given a broader palette of influences to bring some much-needed diversity to the fold, A Breath Before Surfacing have more than enough talent to do some damage in the scene. Ultimately they fall in the same traps as seemingly every deathcore band, namely, focusing too much on technicality/brutality and not nearly enough on songs/originality. I mean, you could be five songs deep shuffling a playlist with these guys and a dozen other deathcore bands and never realize the first song ended much less realize that a completely different band is playing.
