Womb (studio album)
by Juan Bond

From Mercury 03/19/2021 14:49

(Coming from someone not familiar with mathcore, metalcore, etc, I thought this was a good album and I liked it. Don't have strong feelings about it at all nor do I have much context/familiarity with the styles to hear perhaps the nuances and triumphs and shortcomings within the genre.)

Quite the raging album. Its f&%$ing intense a hell! The odd time signatures are part and parcel to the genre I guess but this album does a pretty good job not making the music all about the utter complexity of it. Instead there is always an emotional and purely visceral feel even when the drums are doing weird stuff. The vocals are good, whispering and screaming and honest to god singing in (almost) equal measure. The opener " Garbage Juice" is a great encapsulation of all these qualities. Its probably the best song here, so although the whole album is pretty cool and somewhat interesting, I feel it does slope downward from the excellent start.

The extreme and intense parts are good, not to an awe-inspiring or distinguishing degree. The melodic parts are kinda cool, but they tended to make me feel I was missing the heavier stuff, the guitar riffs are quite pretty at times.

I guess after 2 listens I still haven't fully connected with the album. I like most all its parts, but the sum of its parts is not terribly memorable to me. That may be because I am not a fan of the more intense musical genres. The only exposure I have to mathcore, metalcore, etc are the more heralded and "classic" albums. This I don't feel is some classic of the genre, but what would I know? A: next to nothing.

In closing, to my ears this is a fun and fast paced and cool mathcore album that mixes alternative rock and melodicism quite well most of the time. Its a solid debut album and fans of this style may find it quite great.