Deathcore tends to discourage notions like subtlety or progression, but recent years have seen Whitechapel developing in unexpected ways. Their last two records, 2018’s The Valley and 2021’s Kin, pitched the Knoxville sextet into curiously radio-friendly territory. Acoustic guitars were glimpsed; Shinedown were invoked as a comparison. All that is swept away on Hymns In Dissonance, an exercise in returning to what guitarist Alex Wade describes as “ignorantly heavy music”. Sure enough, beats are blasted, downtuned riffs slam and frontman Phil Bozeman entirely jettisons the melodies he’s been incorporating for the last few albums – as well as being the title of this outing’s first single, A Visceral Retch could be written on his vocal moodboard. Similarly, while r...
Deathcore tends to discourage notions like subtlety or progression, but recent years have seen Whitechapel developing in unexpected ways. Their last two records, 2018’s The Valley and 2021’s Kin, pitched the Knoxville sextet into curiously radio-friendly territory. Acoustic guitars were glimpsed; Shinedown were invoked as a comparison. All that is swept away on Hymns In Dissonance, an exercise in returning to what guitarist Alex Wade describes as “ignorantly heavy music”. Sure enough, beats are blasted, downtuned riffs slam and frontman Phil Bozeman entirely jettisons the melodies he’s been incorporating for the last few albums – as well as being the title of this outing’s first single, A Visceral Retch could be written on his vocal moodboard. Similarly, while r...