Review: Upon A Burning Body – The World Is My Enemy Now
3 min read
Texas deathcore band Upon A Burning Body’s third studio album The World Is My Enemy Now is the perfect alarm clock for people who struggle waking up in the morning.
The world could not be faced with a more frightening enemy. The World Is My Enemy Now is a relentless hailstorm of raw, savage noises that could easily feature on an appropriation of High School Musical performed in an apocalyptic alternative universe. The bands message is simple – the world is a terrible place, and the only way to cope is to spite everything in it. This message is encapsulated by track titles such as Middle Finger to the World – which would sound pretentious if used by any other band yet is certainly earned by the sheer brutality Upon A Burning Body impressively manage to carry throughout their album.
Throughout the album, listeners are berated by the almost inhumane sounding growls of lead singer Danny Leal who opens most songs like the crack of thunder that precedes the start of an enormous storm. Leal’s vocals are followed by an incredibly heavy downpour of unabashed electric guitar riffs that vary throughout each track and that would make any Upon A Burning Body song incredibly difficult to play on Guitar Hero. These harmonies personify Leal’s livid, spite-laden lyrics spontaneously decimated throughout songs by savage guitar breakdowns – a key characteristic of the heavy metal/deathcore genre.
This is what angry sounds like.
For those unaccustomed to heavy music, Upon A Burning Body’s new album falls into the trap of being too hateful – a word chanted excessively throughout the track Pledge Your Allegiance. The brief instrumental, A Toda Madre o un Desmadre provides listeners a moment to catch their breath, before being hurled headfirst back into an abyss of savage noise. The track is acoustic haze of Spanish flavored guitar harmonies, hinting at the diversity of Upon A Burning Body’s talent- that is clearly not restricted to the sounds of demons and other scary creatures having some kind of rave.
Songs such as I’ve Earned My Time and Bring To The Rain feature clean vocals that remind audiences the band members of Upon A Burning Body are more than noisy, hateful sound-robots. The dramatic contrast between these clean vocals, intertwined with Leal’s demonic growls creates a musical block of marble chocolate.
Even if you’re not the biggest marble chocolate fan, you can at least stand back and appreciate how intriguing the chocolate looks. The addition of a choir as well as clean vocals in Middle finger to the World sounds almost majestic, with the pure, choral sounds untarnished by a continued onslaught of guitar riffs.
The World Is My Enemy Now is impressively brutal – the kind of music you need at the end of a horrible day. However, it’s easy to feel stifled by Upon A Burning Body’s cloud of vehemence – to the extent that you need to go out into the sun and cuddle a small baby animal (which I may or may not have done).
