Upon a Burning Body - Southern Hostility

Unapologetically brimming with attitude all throughout their career, Texan four-piece Upon a Burning Body became one of deathcore’s most prominent names with 2012′s landmark Red. White. Green., an album that certainly captures the genre’s essence at the peak of its popularity, but one that I also can’t really understand how it surpassed so many other, stronger albums. Sure, “Sin City” is a filthy, indulgent, nihilistic banger, but the album doesn’t really have much else to it to set it apart from the rest of the deathcore crop at the time. While bands in the deathcore herd seeking to enhance their sound usually went to either hyperspeed technicality like Rings of Saturn and Born of Osiris or nu-metal-inspired groove like Attila and Emmure, Upon a Burning Body sought their sense of groove from the same nearby southern inspirations that eventually became a huge part of Whitechapel’s sound later in their career. That fondness for dirty, southern groove metal is on display more than ever on Southern Hostility, so much that it eclipses the band’s deathcore DNA, and honestly, it might be for the better.

Upon a Burning Body waste absolutely no time jumping into high gear on their fifth studio album, kicking off with a minute-long title track that consists of just a severed breakdown that might ordinarily serve as the typical kind of climax of an ordinary deathcore jam. But from there on out, the album is an astonishingly streamlined affair (with the following tracks all ranging between 3:08 and 3:30 except for the 3:45 closing track) that only occasionally tastes of early 2010′s deathcore and far more smacks of Sacrament-era Lamb of God. It’s not until the seventh track, “Reinventing Hatred”, that the iconic layered deathcore gutturals show up. And sure, the mimicry can get distracting, but not so much that it really impedes this album from accomplishing its mission of nasty, no-fucks-given, southern groove, especially since it seems to come so naturally to Upon a Burning Body.

The second track immediately after the disembodied breakdown of an opening song, the subsequent “King of Diamonds”, dives straight into the down-tuned, bourbon-infused riffage and features possibly the most upfront imitation of Randy Blythe’s melodic roar that made such a prominent mark on Sacrament. The bouncy, mosh-inducing “All Pride No Pain” finds the band channeling more gnarly, southern grooves and shouted vocal aggression across its punchy three-and-a-half minutes.

The song “The Anthem of the Doomed” returns the album to the synchronized double-bass/palm-mute metalcore groove just before its end that the opening track kicked everything off with, which does feel to be more in Upon a Burning Body’s wheelhouse than the straight-up groove metal. I mean the band do indeed prove on the previous tracks that they can definitely channel that type of music, but this song shows that they do do better when they supplement it with some of that good ol’ deathcore. 

Despite its brevity, the album is, however, not without its slumps. “The Champ Is Coming” is a tight, but definitely kind of corny sport-fighting groove metal entrance song that really doesn’t add anything special beyond the lyrical theme, and, despite its slick opening leads, the gang vocal chants on the repetitive and somehow slightly dragging “Burn” (despite its 3-minute run time) only barely provide the sense of unifying energizing the band is going for. It’s the mid-paced march of the pull-of-lead-laden modern groove metal brotherhood anthem “Never Alone” that really hams up the arm-around-shoulder, whiskey-in-hand unity with the return of the Blythe-esque melodic growls.

Even though the momentary dabbles in unifying melodic vocal stylings don’t all go over so poorly for Upon a Burning body though, they certainly aren’t the best utilized feature of the album. “From Darkness” features a particularly elongated vocal melody that reminds me of Demon Hunter’s most metallically melodic sections and wholeheartedly beckons anyone with beer in hand to shout along, but with less soul and more try-hard charisma that reminds me of Attila trying to turn up the party intensity. This melodic feature which shows up once more time on the album’s closing track, “Soul Searcher”, this time going for that more soulful vibe, with a metalcore sing-along approach that thankfully succeeds and ends the album on a strong note.

Even though the proficiency in modern groove metal the band display on this album doesn’t really extend into its most melodic areas, Upon a Burning Body do show enough competence to get the basic job done and come through with an at least satisfactorily infectious groove metal album with just a dash of the deathcore they built their name upon. For what it’s worth, it’s certainly not one of the worst in its field, and I think I’d rather hear this band churn out obvious Lamb of God imitation than run-of-the-mill deathcore. Again, I did find this album mostly enjoyable, and I’m not shitting on it for not being some avant-garde conceptual masterwork. Its strengths and weaknesses are just very easily distinguishable when the band find themselves playing to one or the other, which should be a good thing for them going forward (to potentially adjust to or improve upon), even if they’ll likely just continue indulging in whatever the fuck they want.

We are Lamb of.. Upon a Burning Body from San Antonio motherfucking Texas!/10