March 15, 2013 • Season of Mist
I guess I'm kind of obligated to review this album now, having enjoyed Venerable and seeing this band play twice in the last year. I don't mind, though; KEN mode hasn't let up on quality and Entrench is a pretty darn awesome album.
They're back with the same sort of frantic-metalcore-meets-sludge sound ("sludgecore" isn't a thing yet, no matter how hard I try), though the noise rock aspects have been toned down for a more post-hardcore-oriented approach. Like before, the band is heavy and gritty as hell but the occasional softer moment; the pounding rarely lets up throughout the album but it does switch a bit from fast-paced punk-tinged sludgecore to some slower doomier stuff and an almost alt/post-rock like buildup on "Romeo Must Never Know". There are still a lot of surprisingly catchy moments as well without suffering from breakdown overload ("The Promises of God" is especially great in this regard), while at the same time the technicality of the performance has been dialed back a bit in favor of just rocking out. And that's great.
I could probably go as far as to say that I'm liking this more than Venerable right off the bat. I can't really think of anything they didn't do just right. Absolutely a great and worthy followup (yeah at some point I really should check out their first three albums...) and definitely recommended to anyone who's a fan of sludgecore in general.
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