Just about every popular rock music style is closely associated with a certain locale, and hardcore and the United States have always gone hand in hand. But by this stage of the game, the style has reached far and wide throughout the globe, as proved once more with the emergence of Britain's
Dead Swans and their 2009 release,
Sleepwalkers. Everything you'd expect from a modern-day hardcore metal album (comparable to such "genre godfather acts" as
Vision of Disorder and their ilk) is detected here. In other words, the amount of tonsil-tickling screaming, gonzoid metal riffing, and smash 'n' bash drumming is offered rather abundantly, especially on such dagger-sharp ditties as "Thinking of You," "Ivy Archway," and "So Far You've Only Made Things Worse." While
the Dead Swans haven't reinvented the hardcore metal wheel on
Sleepwalkers, they have certainly made it one heck of a vicious and snarling beast. ~ Greg Prato