Dog Days – Via dolorosa

July 10, 2012 • self-released

I've always had spotty experiences with metalcore, even though it's not something I listen to often. It seems as though in order to be good, you have to mix it with a bit of something else—progresive metal, sludge metal, or something else—but Dog Days don't really do that. Consequently they wind up sounding pretty average, though that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Via dolorosa showcases a pretty typical version of metalcore, so unfortunately there isn't really much to say about what they're doing. You have the typical fusion of metal and punk riffing, breakdowns, harsh vocals, and so on—basically a less-technical Botch (there's nothing technical at all about Dog Days, really). They do have the occasional powerviolence-ish blasting here and there, which is pretty cool, though I would have liked to see more of that.

But it's still decent, at least in the sense that they do metalcore well. It probably appeals to me more than usual because it tends to lean more toward the punk side than the metal side a lot of the time, because the metal bits tend to sound a bit silly (see the beginning of "Rain Shadow"). There are plenty of catchy bits and the breakdowns are nice and moshable (so I assume).

But yeah, like I said before, it's decent but there isn't much of anything that makes it stand out, so it's not really recommendable to anyone who doesn't already love the genre. Personally, I won't be revisiting it much (if ever) in the future, but for what it is, it's not bad.

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