NO QUARTER GIVEN - The Embodiment Begins

10 songs
42:37 minutes
****
Rising / SPV

Bandpage

You would think that even in the least developed countries, people should have noticed that the metalcore is facing its slow but inevitable decline. But maybe this hasn’t reached the British islands yet, because No Quarter Given take, as their band name hints, no prisoners on their debut album, and after a short and melodic intro, they assault their audience with nine archetypical metalcore songs with a strong thrash tendency, all of this rendered quite professionally, but while they respect the form, they must have forgotten to come up with worthwhile song ideas.

At times, when they break out of their tedious mid-tempo grooves, No Quarter Given are even achieving something of interest, and the sparse guitar solos are placed at relevant moments to add some variety, but most of the time we get bone-dry guitar shredding with aggressive vocals topping it all. No Quarter Given are quite strong when it comes to delivering groovy thrash metal riffs, but like I said before, you need more than good craftsmanship to come up with a viable record.

The Embodiment Begins is thus one more questionable addition to the never ending metalcore flood, and I don’t know whom I can recommend this to. If you are into Pantera and less complex Meshuggah, you might well risk an ear, but otherwise I doubt that it makes much sense spending your money on this stylistically good but content-wise rather poor album.