Halloween is a time of creepy costumes, lots and lots of candy and even the occasional insane clown roaming the area, but this year brought us something different. Deathcore heavyweights AngelMaker and A Night In Texas have given us, Unholy Alliance - a hard hitting EP that put the deathcore community on the edge of their seats, anticipating this release. For those who do not know who either of these groups are, lets take a step back.
AngelMaker is a six piece deathcore group reining from Canada. The group actually features two lead vocalists, making their range in screams, pig squeals, and growls limitless. Founded in 2011, AngelMaker has released an EP - Decay - a spit - with Lament and Isolations - and full-length album - Dissentient. The band has been beloved in the community for a number of years now. This 2016 release only helped this more.
A Night in Texas is a five member piece from Australia. Since being brought together in 2010, the group has a demo, an EP - Invigoration - a full length album - The God Delusion and now this split with AngelMaker. The band recently said goodbye to their lead vocalist, Rheese Peters and introduced Ethan Lucas as their new vocalist to lead ANIT into the battle.
The two groups dropped some exciting hints and clues into a future release back a couple months back - posting on Facebook some images of what looked like album art work at the time. This left the internet wondering and excited on what was about to be announced. Finally, it was revealed that the split, Unholy Alliance, would be released on Halloween and goodness was it a long wait.
Unfortunately, circumstances came about and pushed back the album release for a couple weeks. That didn’t stop the two uploading the full-stream to YouTube for us to enjoy and obsess over until it was finally released to Spotify and iTunes.
This split featured 3 tracks from each band, including a re-recorded The Rotten King. ANIT kicked off Unholy Alliance with Mortal Drones, with features from the duo vocalists from AngelMaker, Mike Greenwood and Casey Tyson-Pierce. The trio of vocalist absolutely catch your attention for a hellacious split coming ahead.
As rented earlier, A Rotten King was re-recorded for this half of ANIT's EP. I'm not a huge fan of throwing previous music onto a new release, but this one is allowed because the re-recorded version is just as good as the original, and it ties A Night In Texas's part of this project together well.
After A Rotten King, AngelMaker tags themselves in with Aradia. The into to this song alone with give you the chills, but Mike and Casey deliver some incredible blasts of growls and screams to make it know, AngelMaker is here. The lyrics in the song are dark, and definitely make an impact as this nearly six-minute song chugs head long into The Curse of Earth.
This song enters with a sort of mellow introduction before the lengthy lyrics take over and never look back. Bouncing back and fourth from one another, Mike and Casey show us that the talent is real. Pig squeals shriek through the middle of the song, catchy chants and vicious breakdowns hit, as it pushes towards the six-minute mark also.
The sixth and final track off this split, Day / Day, proves us with another banger to feed our craving for some sick and violent deathcore. Not to mention, there is a pretty sick guitar solo in this, and some chants scattered through out the end of this fantastic split.
The four-minute track closes out the EP fantastic in my opinion. The duel vocalists seem to follow up one another beautifully, and AngelMaker definitely took the split for me. Personally, I have been fans of this group for a couple years now, and only have began listening to ANIT. This is probably one of the best put outs I’ve listened to this year, and the bands have taken the deathcore world by storm with this release. The Curse of Earth is probably my favorite song from AngelMaker, and Mortal Drones from A Night In Texas grabs my attention and not because it features the AM vocalists, but because it grabbed my attention to this split from the opening riff.
10/10
