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vote
6.5
- Bands:
EXTINGUISH - Duration: 00:24:00
- Available from: 05/17/2024
- Label:
-
Daze Style
Streaming not yet available
Extinguish, among the new recruits of the Californian hardcore circuit, reach the finish line of their first album with “One Less Enemy”, putting on the plate a dozen tracks that confirm all that combativeness and desire exhibited on their 2021 EP of the same name, going, in some cases, even beyond in terms of heaviness. This new work in fact marks a further evolution for the band, which has embraced a more angular and dark sound direction over the years, up to the monolithic crossover offered here.
With “One Less Enemy”, the boys embrace more than ever a style that resonates with a profound gravity and bite, thanks to a constant inclusion of death metal and metal influences in general, which creep in here and there along the tracklist. The combination of hardcore and highly metallic tones gives the album a dark and oppressive atmosphere, further enriching its impact.
Faced with this tenaciously burdensome pace, the album objectively loses a bit of dynamism compared to previous efforts, with some pieces that may in fact seem very similar to each other, including a certain lack of variation in rhythm and structure. This uniformity could be difficult to digest for some listeners, although it should be underlined that the band tries to free itself from such impressions by leveraging an undoubted capacity for synthesis; in fact, the songs do not go on longer than necessary, but almost always hit with strength and precision, also relying on a pleasantly raw sound performance, which perfectly captures the energy and intensity of a live performance.
Overall, however, Extinguish are not yet on the levels of their fellow Xibalbas, given that their mix of hardcore and metal does not translate into a particularly enterprising and structured sound: the proposal remains rather essential, devoid of that liveliness of registers that instead he promptly manages to give an edge to the repertoire of the most famous Californians. Of course, some Obituary-style riffs know how to leave their mark, but these are small parentheses in an album with an overall ordinary development, in which above all reigns a heavier – and at times cumbersome – reworking of the metallic hardcore of the past (100 Demons, early Hatebreed, etc.), without major drops in tension, but also without real class shots.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM