Switzerland's secret weapon Breakdown Of Sanity is slowly emerging as a solid entity in the metal world, capable of delivering some of the most mighty and original modern metal. This band's metalcore assault is simply lethal, achieving the perfection that every modern metalcore band aims for nowadays. “Perception” is a massive release and Breakdown of Sanity is a band you must discover this year. They truly deserve wider recognition in the surrounding sea of generic breakdown bands.
From the intro track, “Exordium”, you should gather that this will not be just another common metalcore album. This is something more. The following track “Crumble” is a skull cracker of an opener. The band brings sharp and clean guitar riffage intent on destroying every listener. There's a perfect balance of a modern feel and the older first-generation metalcore attitude, all with a lovely Swedish hint. Blasting bass drops, insane breakdowns (of course), and hi-tech production are all included. In fact, it delivers some of the sickest breakdowns you'll hear in a while, brought to you by different and stunning guitar tones (giving a different flavour to each heavy section). Melodies kick in as well with delighting and intense guitar sections. This is probably one of the grooviest metalcore attacks you'll ever come across. Thanks to simple, but smashing, drumming that's not too complicated but very damn groove oriented. You'll love it. Tracks such as “Hero” and most evidently “The Writer” can show you what I mean.
You really need to listen to this album to understand why it's way better than 90% of modern -core releases. This is literally Europe's hidden gem, one of the most underrated acts out there. Huge and triumphant, the charismatic music is pushed even further by an unbelievable vocal performance. Those vocals! Those vocals are the final touch on this supreme work.
The single “Blind” is not the best song on the album but one of the most hard-hitting for sure. Those drops killed me. Some songs feature short but really enjoyable clean vocal segments - “Scissorhands”, “Broken Wings”, the single “Blind” and the massive final track “Cardiac Silhouette”. Those few, short-lived clean vocal interjections reveal a post-grunge/nu-metalish approach in the singing style which is really hard to detect in the rest of the harsh vocals. Anyways, they're not long enough to give a righteous judgement....but they're facking awesome!
The best of this album is all featured between tracks 9 and 10: “Deliverance” is one of the most evil and insane installments of the album while “Chapters” is the band's most renowned single. Released months ago, I honestly still consider it the best song of the album.
Just a few words about the production, the main setback of this work. Essentially it's good, but it could have been better, Luckily, it's good enough to let us enjoy the sick guitar assaults without being too generic, compressed or excessive.
Breakdown of Sanity has been making huge steps since the release of “Mirrors”. This was already unquestionable with the release of the single “Chapters” months ago. Since then, this band has been one step ahead in the evolution of this artistic movement, achieving the sound all the other bands could only dream of. I'm not the kind of kid always getting wet saying, “ooooh my god...that bass drop was heavy!” or “oouch that breakdown!” or horned by overproduced metalcore albums with djenty influence, lowered tone and loads of post-production special effects but this band....this band is one of the very few capable to do it in the right way. This album is great. No one holds 'em back.
-MATTIA
Links: Facebook // Official Website // iTunes
