Nehemiah
The Asphyxiation Process
6.5
From the frozen tundras of Minnesota arise the six-piece metal onslaught known as Nehemiah. Taking heavy influence from the Swedish metal scene, they throw in heavy mosh break-downs that will have the kids hardcore dancing in no time, which might lump them into your basic boring metalcore style. I, however, feel Nehemiah stands out more as their sound is much more interesting to listen to as they have much stronger riff structure than most. Combining a dual vokill attack, both of which don’t fit the vokills of the typical metalcore band, is a much welcomed change. Brady Wise and Evan Nagan combine the rasp style black metal vokills along with a death growl and choose to leave that often boring metalcore grunt in the dust, which leads them more into the realm of straight on metal. Logan Kelly and Josh Lutterman throw some good, tough (my favorite being the one at the end of “A Virgin Burial”) open-chord breakdowns through out their often dark sounding metal riffs, but the plus is they’re never over-used. In fact it’s a real stretch to even call Nehemiah a metalcore band. To me, it’s melodic death, with a few break-downs thrown in showing some small roots in hardcore. As I said they take heavy influence from Swedish death metal, so you’re going to hear lots of At the Gates style stuff going on, I even hear a little bit of Dissection, which is awesome. Maintaining a very up-beat pass the album flows along rather smoothly and never gets boring, with all the songs being very strong and absent of filler (although the only song I don’t enjoy as much is the instrumental track “There is no Tomorrow”).
The Asphyxiation Process is a strong debut from a band that looks like they have a very bright future ahead of them, as all the musicians involved are young. If you think metalcore is becoming all too contrived and boring, check out Nehemiah, or hell, if you don’t even dig metalcore at all and strictly prefer straight up metal, I still encourage you to check these guys out. They have a good sound going on and it’s only going to go uphill from here, expect good things from this band in the very near future.
