With the passing of time comes the natural progression of any bands’ sound, image and identity – no example is more clear than Within Destruction. With their latest effort Lotus they have exemplified that a change in sound doesn’t mean there’s any sacrifice in quality. Beginning the album with title track, you are presented with a wide array of influences to get your teeth into. Trap beats intersperse heavy riffs and more melodic choruses in an album opener that sets a benchmark of well written heavy music for the remaining 11 songs to match. ‘Toxic’, ‘Nightmare’ and ‘Survival’ all follow suit with well formatted and adequately heavy elements to keep listeners from a broad array of backgrounds satisfied, the latter of the aforementioned three bringing some absolutely dirty guitarwork to the table.
‘Revenge’ is a prime moment of the album – in that it displays that the Slovenian big-hitters are not only able to alter their sound as a band over time, but have mastered the craft. It’s a metalcore rager, structured well and the low tuned guitars give it all the bite it needs to stay heavy. ‘Dying World’ does much of the same, adding a more tame ingredient with the feature of emo-rap pioneer Lil Lotus.
‘Dehumanized’ is a faultlessly heavy track, the technical elements only held at bay by ferocious djent patterns and impressive vocal work. The mighty solo in ‘Illusions’ stands out in the latter stages of the album, alongside the consistently huge vocals on ‘Neo-Yakuza’ and slamming death metal introduction to ‘P.O.P’. All of this and the record as a whole is tied together to a closing point with the outstandingly-shredding ‘Ultima’, one of the best examples of modern heavy music allowing the brutal vocals to step back in favour of an impressive instrumental performance – huge props to guitarist Howard Fang on this one.
Truly, Lotus is a highly impressive effort by Within Destruction, who have transitioned their sound over their last few releases with extreme success and displays of an unfaltering grasp of what makes heavy music enjoyable. The picturesque mountainscapes and lakes of Slovenia may not a place commonly associated with deathcore, but with this record Within Destruction are putting their nation on the map of all things dense and crushingly heavy.