Artist: August Burns Red
Title: Death Below
Label: SharpTone
Cat #: ST67002
Release Year: 2023
Duration: Album
Format: CD
Packaging Type: Jewel case

Death Below is the tenth studio album by American metalcore band August Burns Red

Defining success in the metalcore scene usually boils down to pointing at Pennsylvania five-piece August Burns Red and saying "that". Two decades in the trade have garnered plenty of positive response to their unique style – not to mention two GRAMMY nods for their troubles – all while their trademark tweaking of dials and knobs of the big metalcore machine kept things fresh in a genre-adjacent sort of way. When you get ten albums deep, however, where does continuously skirting the formula in the same ways run the risk of becoming its own muddied method?

To its credit, Death Below is never a one-trick pony. For any measure of balled fist fury and darker atmosphere, there are equal parts quiet and contemplative, tricks and flicks bolstered by a keen sense of technical wizardry to bring it all together. Opener "The Premonition" and eight-minute post-rock odyssey "The Cleansing" weave in and out of one another in a state of natural flow made all the more impressive by their binary elements – otherworldly lightness, ferocious blast beats and intricately tricky rhythms swirl on a stage where no-one feels like the odd one out.

Recommended if you like: Parkway Drive, As I Lay Dying, After The Burial, Darkest Hour, Unearth, Bury Tomorrow, I Killed The Prom Queen, Killswitch Engage, Bullet For My Valentine, Emmure

Track Listing:
1. Premonition
2. The Cleansing
3. Ancestry Featuring – Jesse David Leach
4. Tightrope Featuring – Jason Richardson (6)
5. Fool's Gold In The Bear Trap
6. Backfire
7. Revival
8. Sevink
9. Dark Divide
10. Deadbolt
11. The Abyss Featuring – JT Cavey
12. Reckoning Featuring – Spencer Chamberlain