Independent – 2024 – United States of America
Endoterra describes itself as follows: Endoterra launches a story of human tragedy and triumph, as global political tensions are at an all-time high and religious conflict rages on. When all-out nuclear war, rooted in theological dogmatism, breaks out, the fate of Earth is painfully sealed. Following the tumultuous journey of those who narrowly escaped war-torn Earth, the last refugees of humanity sail the sea of stars on a prototype generation ship. Freed from the chains of destruction of the only home known to humanity, they must fight to persevere on a perilous journey into the unknown as they brave celestial storms and experience the divine wonders of the heavens. Will humanity succumb to the death of its own making, or is there divine providence ensuring their survival?
The Denver based band performs deathcore with progressive elements. Stephen Myers handled guitar-vocals-bass and synths, David Wilson on vocals, Patrick Haga on drums and backing vocals, and Cody Taylor diversified the backing vocals. This is the band’s lineup in a nutshell…
The album opens with Ad Astra. Actually, it’s not a very harsh opening song, it’s a modern metal song with a variety of vocals and some break-downs. The band’s second song Non Exieris opens with growl vocals and in-breaths. I can say that I couldn’t feel the deathcore hardness and fluidity until now. Intense use of keyboards adds depth to the overall atmosphere of the song, but it seems to take some of the harshness away.
This 9-song album also includes a Def Leppard cover, Gods of War, which is their interpretation of a band they love. The seventh song of the album, Endoterra, is a duet with Jonathan Carpenter, who also worked in Foreign Waves and The Contortionist.
I didn’t find Endoterra to be deathcore aggressive and transitional, but it’s obvious that they make “core” based music, which can also be called metalcore. But still, I can’t consider them as a very aggressive band. Their use of keyboards, song traffic and general atmospheric structure seemed a bit static. But the vocals are still quite strong, I would expect the intense and harsh atmosphere of bands like Carnifex, Slaughter to Prevail (although they are more nu-metal lately), Suicide Silence, Thy Art is Murder, Fit For An Autopsy, Despised Icon…
I may have been a bit long, but Endoterra doesn’t offer a very hard deathcore sound in terms of recording quality and compositional capacity. But I can say that I find them successful in terms of the traffic of their songs and the emotions they make you feel. The band’s self-titled song has been streamed more than 1000 times on Spotify. The emotional intensity of the song is higher than the other songs, maybe that’s why it reached more people. If I talk about the Def Leppard covers briefly, it seems like they are not very compatible with the style they play.
The album stands out with its duration of 1 hour and 7 minutes. In fact, such a long recording might cool the listener down a bit, I think they could have shortened the intro and transitions a bit more and made the album a more standard 45-50 minutes.
7/10
This album review was originally written in Turkish. Some ambiguities may occur due to translation.
