From across the pond something has been brewing. UK’s Annotations of an Autopsy’s Nuclear Blast release The Reign of Darkness is an album with a sound of a band coming into its own. While not forsaking the expectations to provide breakdowns to feed mosh-mongers, Annotations of an Autopsy probes a potential new direction with The Reign of Darkness but fails to deliver an album with any real meat.

The tracks are built a predicable foundation of down beat slams, syncopated guitars and drums, with groove-infused breakdowns. The guitars are thick, low, with a warm tone complimented by a crisp and eerie lead guitar tone. While there is some lead guitar that ranges from underwhelming to tasteful and atmospheric, there is no question this band is driving march of low end crunch. The album’s sixth track, “Catastrophic Hybridization,” is a standout, in part, because it highlights this duality of atmosphere with serpentine lead guitar and obligatory chest-caving rhythm guitar. Most of the album is still dominated by more CHUG-CHUG-CHUG than a college frat party.

The vocals might be a point of contention for many. Rather than a deep guttural bellow or shrill high shriek, they are a saturated, snarling growl. Lacking any real variations or changes in pitch, they are raw, and aggressive, dripping with rapid anger. The vocals do take an experimental turn in the album’s most interesting track, “Into The Black Slumber.” While the guitars weave ominous grooves punctuated and phrased with impressive drumming, subversive passages of spoken word and whispering vocal sections are inserted. Rather unexpected elements that are well used in the album to provide depth and texture to the vocals without using other conventions such as the ridiculous pig squeals familiar to deathcore.

Annotations of an Autopsy seems to be trying to inhabit an awkward aesthetic space somewhere between slam or brutal death metal and deathcore. The influence of slam progenitors Devourment is obvious along with death metal legends Cannibal Corpse. However, The Reign of Darkness lacks the over-the-top musical absurdity of slam and the refined arrangements and technicality of brutal death acts such as Suffocation. Instead, Annotations of an Autopsy gets lost in the noise of deathcore, sharing the field with an ever-increasing number of bands such as Carnifex, Whitechapel, and Suicide Silence. Their low-end guttural sound gets tossed in a saturated and exploited genre while the genre’s sound itself becomes increasingly diluted and nebulous. It’s not so much the primitive nature of majority of the songs that disappoints, rather is the inability for them to feel like anything more than filler tracks or stale leftovers of any other deathcore band.

To their credit, Annotations of an Autopsy do incorporate melody and instrumentation enough to do provide some rich texture and some compelling variety. This saves them from being completely dismissed as a one-dimensional br00tal deathcore band. The drumming is very notable in many songs and definitely the strongest single element of the album’s sound.

The Reign of Darkness indicates Annotations of an Autopsy does not lack the raw talent or musicianship, and the album has many notable characteristics. There are definitive signs of maturity and even risk and experimentation. However, the final sentiment toward this album is of it being the uninspiring, diluted regurgitation of cliques. Nothing is really remarkable or stands out above its rather limiting deathcore conventions. Despite notable attempts at differentiation, its vision is still shortsighted. The Reign of Darkness sill lacks enough originality to bring the album out of the realm of the mediocre. Like that one high school crush, the album teases your attention but fails to deliver anything of palpable excellence, leaving you with a vapid and frustrating auditory experience.

2.5/5