The Last Ten Seconds of Life - No Name Graves
I said I was gonna get back in the swing of things by writing shorter, not-so-heady reviews of some of my favorite albums of the year before the year is up, which I have not really stuck to because I can't help it. I can't help but write extensively and elaborately on albums that I love. Some albums though, it would be ridiculous to get trapped in the weeds of because it really is as simple as they just go fucking hard, and No Name Graves is one of those albums. Despite this vein of filthy, extreme deathcore seeing something between a renaissance and a fleeting Tik Tok trend, this is The Last Ten Seconds of Life's seventh full-length, and their persistence and experience with the genre shines through the multitude of Lorna Shore and Kublai Khan imitators crowding their field on this album.
This album does not have any grander overarching theme than vengeance and fury for the rot of mankind in biblical and uncompromisingly brutal terms and with the kind of unrelentingly nasty riffing, monstrous growls, and pounding rhythms that accurately depict the pure, unquenchable, blood-drunk wrath that this subgenre of deathcore can really tap into at its finest. And this is that style of deathcore at its finest; it really is one of those not-that-deep kind of albums whose appeal is just in how well-produced its theoretical prospect is. The band keeps it short and sweet in just over a half-hour of extreme, instinctive pummeling, like a focused, in-form, and thoroughly trained elite fighter with muscle memory guiding their fluid movements. And throughout the entire 34 minutes, there's never the sense that the band are trying to be anyone else or do anything other than their mission and what they thrive at doing. In a landscape saturated with so much try-hard inauthenticity and over-produced Marvel-movie special effects bullshit, this is a deathcore album whose genuine intensity stands out. No Name Graves does not rely on bells and whistles or ripping off Will Ramos' snarls or ripping off the "Bleed" triplets or ripping off Knocked Loose's dog-barking. It relies on lethal double-bass blast beats, bass-heavy mixing, tactical guitar flair, and the simple continuation of the gritty ethos TLTSOL have been crafting for over a decade now, no shortcuts, no bullshit, and in a deathcore climate increasingly polluted with fabricators and quick-buck makers, No Name Graves is absolutely a breath of fresh air.
8/10