Chelsea Grin - Eternal Nightmare

Despite losing two longtime guitarists and founding vocalist Alex Koehler, Chelsea Grin’s remaining parts manage to contribute well to the quality wave of deathcore that 2017 started, and certainly upped the ante on their djenty, but mostly generic and sometimes melodramatic 2016 effort, Self Inflicted. What the past couple of years have shown is that deathcore has benefited from both the clinical approach bands have taken to its basics and the integration of lots of other types of heavy musical elements. In other words, the genre’s movers and shakers have gradually worked toward the optimum deathcore song.

Much like Emmure and Fit for an Autopsy elevated their sound significantly last year, Chelsea Grin work in many new, modern twists to their sound not just for novelty but for the enhancement of the deathly hardcore brutality that the genre most often strives for. It’s actually pretty impressive how tightly knit Chelsea Grin sound given how recently they switched vocalists and how Dan Jones’ and Jake Hammond’s shoes were filled by sole remaining guitarist Stephen Rutishauser. Despite only one guitar, the band’s sound is fuller on Eternal Nightmare than it has been on any of their past works, which is no doubt due to a more flattering production job, but hey, it does sound a lot better.

The album clocks in at just under a succinct 37 minutes and it’s pretty well-trimmed of the fat that has accumulated around the band’s recent releases. And the eleven tracks all fall below the four-minute mark so the individual pieces are more efficiently delivered than they have been in the past. The lyrics also get a much-needed upgrade from the whiny metalcore love clichés that characterized the band’s previous releases.

It’s not re-writing the rules of deathcore by any means, and to a degree it’s predictable. But it is a step up for the band, and Tom Barber steps up to the microphone well throughout the songs on the album, of which there are a good number of highlights. The ultra short blaster “The Wolf” makes nice use of a strange industrial intro and a bellowing low end, as well as a nice “bridge” riff. The song “Outliers” makes good use of an abrasive, noisy outro as well to send the album into its final moments. The piano introduction of “Across the Earth” opens up into a rather apocalyptic finish by its end, well accented by the guitar work. “See You Soon” works in a more imaginative breakdown than what runs amok in deathcore. The breakdown in “Limbs” also works in the slow-down of the pace well and not too extensively as most deathcore breakdowns do. “Scent of Evil” is one of the longer cuts and it captures the band’s menacing horror sound at its best. The prominence of the djenty 8-string guitar in the frightening “Outliers”, especially near the end, is a nice touch and much better utilized than on pretty much all of Self Inflicted.

Eternal Nightmare is definitely one of Chelsea Grin’s stronger releases, if not their strongest. They really put a little bit more into all the aspects of their sound that needed some leveling up (the composition, the production, the lyrics, the overall energy of the performances), and it paid off. It’s another win for a genre that was being written off as dead not too long ago and being unsuccessfully “saved” by a Deftones impersonation from one of the genre’s greats last year as their lesser known compatriots stepped up to the plate and hit hard in succession. The genre hasn’t been as prolific this year as it was last year, but with Impending Doom coming back and now Chelsea Grin upping their game, deathcore’s win streak is still going.