Reviews

By starting off their debut album with a piano and electronics on "Dawning," this death metal band from Tennessee make it clear that they're a bit different from other bands of this genre. The first real song, "Liberation of a Giant," is different from a lot of other bands because they slow things down and frontman Jesse Mainor actually sings while growling, which is quite refreshing to hear. The rest of the band are really good at handling everything, including bassist Louie Thal, who has a bit of Les Claypool in him on some tracks. The backing vocals, particularly on "The Accidentist," need some work, but other than that, this is a pretty good effort for a first album.

As for the rest of the album, only "Autonomy" slips, but that's only because they were probably trying too hard. While some of their probable influences, like say the Dillinger Escape Plan can easily be heard, A Different Breed of Killer throws some new things into the mix. Guitarists Ethan Brown and Trevor McKee can shred with the best of them but also know how to hold things back when necessary, which is good because no one wants to be bludgeoned by guitars for half an hour.

Near the end, however the band starts repeating themselves, with the seven-minute "The Glorious Fall," which repeats many of the same tricks the band introduced earlier on the record. But that's the real problem with a lot of these bands, that once they introduce something that is moderately new and different, where else can they go? Fortunately it's only this band's first album so they may have many chances to try out more things and differentiate themselves more from the rest of the pack. Overall, pretty good but it'll be interesting to see what they try next time around.