The Empire Shall Fall – Awaken

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After a good year of demoing material for The Empire Shall Fall, a new project featuring former Killswitch Engage front-man Jesse Leach after two albums with Seamless, released their debut album in North America in November 2009, but Europe only saw a release in June 2010. There are clear elements of Leach’s work with Killswitch here (Voices Forming Weapons), but the rest of the influences are clearly modern metalcore, although most of the songs are a lot more melodic and complex than most metalcore. Half of them are rather mundane though and fourth song, Choir of Angels, is the first track to hit a solid groove. We The People can’t shake the influence of Rage Against The Machine long enough to establish it’s own identity, even though it’s clearly more metalcore than anything Rage ever did, These Colours Bleed is a song of two halves with a dischordant pause in the middle between the fast-paced first half and slower second, and opener Awaken has enjoyable elements, but the whole song is too disjointed to make use of them. Anyone looking for another Alive Or Just Breathing, the career high point of both Leach and Killswitch Engage, won’t find it here. Guitarist Marcus de Lisle’s production is excellent but that can’t save some of these messy songs or the fact that some of the ideas are borrowed from elsewhere, like the KoRn riffs of closer The Kingdom.

Written by Andy Lye
More: 2010, Albums, Heavy Metal (Extreme Vocals), Quick.Play Reviews, The Empire Shall Fall