Crucify the Faith – New Breed EP

[schema type=”review” name=”Crucify the Faith – New Breed” author=”Juho Karila” pubdate=”2017-02-28″ ]

Founded in 2014, Crucify the Faith is a 5-piece mayhem from Helsinki. Dubbing themselves as metalcore, I found their debut album much more described as thrashy groove metal, following the pawprints of the hyenas of Lahti: Profane Omen.

The EP is opened by Make it Through which is the most dynamic track of them all. It kicks off with a pretty neat groove when it progresses to a melodic intro and then to the verse pretty hastily. Aki Juvonen‘s vocals colors the massive and heavy sound nicely and especially his growls and low grunts adds nice contrast to the guitar leads which create a lighter feel to the heavy gravity of the song. Towards the end, we hear a frail acoustic section, which deceives the listener as it slips in almost unnoticed and a female vocalist adds a nice touch. Only the chorus and raspy shouts are stinging my ears and making it wonder if he should take more singing lessons or just simply focus on the low-register that is Aki’s stongpoint. Here and there you can also hear that they’re a fairly new band and some sections sounds a bit rushed; sometimes just less is more.

Second one is called The Strong Will Survive and it’s more focused on the groove. It begins with a riff that screams for a moshpit and it doesn’t take long for the thrash-comp to begin and heads start to bang. This killer intro turns into a melodic chorus before verse pretty nicely and the song is clearly more mature, even if you could hear the influence of Profane Omen in the overall feeling, but only in a good way.
While the song is more straightforward in structure, it rolls forward really nicely and everything is welded together almost perfectly, making this one of my favorite songs of the EP. Once again, only it makes me wish the semi-clean vocals would had been ditched.

New Breed is the title-track for this release and it’s the first one to clearly show metalcore influences. The explosive intro plays with chord-harmonies and simple but working guitar leads which takes us to the verse so seamless, it’s hard to tell when it actually begun. Same subtlety persists through the first moments, even if the riff changes, it’s deceiving and tricking me to wonder if we had gone to a pre-chorus already. And then the song slows down and we hear the chorus, which changes the course of the track and brings it to a standstill before a more traditional metalcore breakdown. After the brief moment to catch a breather, begins the solo section which shows some sharp shredding but it also shows that the band still has a way to go in maturing.
For the first time also the guitarists bothers me as the clean arpeggio part in middle of the track would just require some delicate dynamic lead rather than some out-of-place tapping which quite much kills the mood for the rest of the track. When the verse comes again with the same guitar leads, it sounds like repetition in bad way and just don’t cut it. Best part of the song is the chorus that sounds like Bloodred Hourglass -style modern melodeath but it doesn’t save the weakest track.

This Generation Falls has some pretty good ideas but it has the most pointy edges, the dynamics changes without a prior warning and feels like the song is comprised of glue-together riffs. However, it doesn’t bother me as much as the flaws of previous ones and it gives us one of the best grooves of the album, just before the solo. Somehow the song reminds me of Killswitch Engage.

The last one, Unreal builds up a nice tension before blasting off with a verse and the best guitar lead of the release, which is cut off as the familiar thrashy crunch kicks in. This track doesn’t give us anything new but it’s clearly one of the best ones and probably the most professional one. Once again everything is seamless and nothing sticks out in the wrong way; this is a song I really look forward in hearing live. Special honorary mention for the Veil of Maya vibes on this one.

CtF clearly know how to do their stuff and they show some serious prowess as songwriters but many of the songs feels like they’ve been overly stuffed with frills and it seems like some parts were done in a hurry and not thought through. I have a feeling that if they just hold up their faith, they’ll cut it through natural progression. These guys are something I will surely follow and after having seen them live a couple of times, I can say they live the energy of the songs up on the stage.

Lineup:

Vocals – Aki Juvonen
Drums – Valtteri Estola
Guitar – Jermu Laine
Bass – Lauri Kurkela
Guitar – Jere Kontiainen

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