Album: Savage Seas by Feed Her to the Sharks (2013)

Score: 60%

Title: "I have never felt more mixed on an album than this"

Metalcore started in the 90's, but the early version of it was like the early version of any musical genre: an undefined primordial soup of ideas that took a bit to consolidate itself into the form that truly put the genre on the table. With metalcore specifically, this form was the (in)famous melodeath-derived version. You know the bands already: As I Lay Dying, Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall, and the like. These bands played what was a poppy form of melodeath with clean choruses, verse-chorus-verse-chorus song structure, and big ol' chugdowns every song. It was this metalcore that made the genre a household name in the underground music scene, and it was this metalcore that became the absolute mortal enemy of the more traditional metal scene. As a metalcore fan myself, I actually don't like this kind of -core too much. It always feels a bit lacking in my eyes, trapped between trying to be metal and trying to be something else. The guitarwork is constrained by its staunch adherence to melodeath, the vocals feel like they don't embrace their own unique traits, and the breakdowns are limited due to the more traditional metal guitar tones and compositions not allowing them to get at visceral as they could be. No, I got into metalcore very late, in 2016 or so, and the -core I got into was of a different breed. In other words, this kind of "melodeath-core" was shackled by its slavish adherence to its metal father and hardcore mother.

A breed most traditional metalheads are not aware appears to exist, that is. See, in the late 2000's and early 2010's, metalcore finally shed the shackles of its parents, splitting off in roughly two directions. The first was deathcore, taking the brutal and visceral elements of metalcore and then just cranking it up to 11. Funnily enough early deathcore was effectively just more death-metal-ish melodeath-core, but then Suicide Silence and other Myspace bands came along and utterly ripped the metallic roots of the genre from it, creating a truly monstrously heavy genre that was too simplistically chuggy to be metal--but too hideously dark to be hardcore. The scene who remained metalcore did much the same thing: excising the metallic and hardcore roots from -core, focusing on its unique elements, and creating an entirely new genre that was neither metal or hardcore. These new -core bands are the majority of the scene these days. This was what metalcore had to do to survive--it had to be something different from its estranged parents, rather than being just a shallow copy of their most surface level traits.

This history lesson is necessary because Feed Her to the Shark's second album, Savage Seas, is the exact kind of melodeath-core I mentioned in the first part of this review--except it came out in 2013. Savage Seas feels like a weird relic from a long-gone era; by the time this album had come out, djent and progressive/technical metalcore albums like Erra's Impulse (2011) and Augment (2013), Periphery's Periphery II (2012) were dropping; the more chuggy kind of -core like Breakdown of Sanity were firmly established, and the poppier and catchier post-hardcore-influenced stuff like Of Mice and Men, Outline in Color, and Mephis May Fire were doing their own thing. Not many bands did this kind of music by now.

Does that mean that Savage Seas is a unique release, brimming with an old-school energy? Oh god no. It's all downhill from here, folks.

Not totally, mind you, but my god I have never seen an album that leaves me as mixed as this album. This album is nothing but bog-standard melodeath-core, though you'd be hard-pressed to believe it from first spin: the first track (the title one too, for some insane reason) is quite literally nothing but a string of breakdowns with zero riffs. I normally hate when metalheads say that -core is like that, but it fits here. Credit where credit is due though: FHttS manages to make each of these successive breakdowns feel distinct and not awkwardly stapled together. The section at the 2:30-3:00 mark even has a pretty catchy groove in a way that metalcore bands rarely have. The rest of the album, though, is the standard formula of melodeath riffs with catchy choruses and breakdowns. If there's anything notable about the guitarwork, it's that it isn't quite a ripoff of At The Gates as the earlier bands I mentioned--the riffs have a slight hardcore simplicity to them, and frequently sound closer to the more post-hardcore-ish side of metalcore. The riffs remain metallic, but not excessively so. FHttS also know their way around guitar tones and production: their guitar tone works perfectly with their "hardcore-ified metal" riffs and their breakdowns, giving them a pummeling energy that sidesteps the feebleness I always felt in bands like Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying. They also use a lot more breakdowns per song, which is fine by me as breakdowns rock and they never sound weak. Solos are also a thing here--the lack of them in modern metalcore is one of my misgivings with it, and I must praise this earlier more metallic variant for keeping them alive. They tend to be rather short, though.

The production fronts the vocals: not a problem in metalcore, as it's a very vocal-focused genre, though it does mean the guitar lines sometimes get buried. The real bad issues are in sections such as Memory of You's clean choruses, where the clean vocals, drums, and rhythm guitar's chugs absolutely bury the lead guitar so much you have to strain to hear the admittedly catchy riff it's playing. This kinda thing is super common in metalcore (in metal proper, the guitar and drums are usually so fronted that they bury the vocals, and metal vocals are nowhere near as important to it as they are to metalcore), and in fact this plagues about every single song in the album. Please let me hear the guitar! The vocals really do bury the lead guitar a lot of the time, whereas the far more chuggy and simplistic rhythm guitar usually remains audible, giving the album the impression that it's a lot dumber and chuggier than it actually is. The riffs are generally nothing amazingly unique, though Shore of Lonlieness is interestingly major-key for a lot of its riffs.

The drums are very bog-standard metalcore drumming. Blast beats appear sometimes, but usually in bursts--otherwise, the drums really only stand out in the breakdowns but are buried by the chugging guitars a lot of the time. The bass is nearly inaudible. There is also absolutely inexplicable light electronic elements. These synths and wubs appear frequently enough that they aren't just some random thing, but not enough that they form an important part of the music, like, say, I See Stars. I truly don't understand why they're there, but they're not bad, just kinda weird. I guess Electronicore was getting big enough that everyone wanted in on the action.

So far so good right? You'll notice that I have not mentioned the vocals because.

Hoo boy.

FHttS's sole vocalist, Andrew Van der Zalm handles both the harsh and clean vocals. In my experience, vocalists doing double-duty like this generally have one side they do better in (an exception would be the vocalist of The Afterimage, but that band imploded after one shitty LP so welp). Now, for the cleans, Zalm's singing is quite good--he has the soaring cleans that make metalcore so catchy, but he never sounds whiny (this is an observation, not a compliment--I for one love Whiny Emo Bullshit, but it doesn't work with these kinds of instrumentals). The cleans aren't as common as most bands of this ilk, though, or perhaps it's his...unique harsh vocals that keep me from realizing the actual ratio.

His harsh vocals are split between two kinds: firstly, and less commonly, he has a very good low guttural. Gutturals this low are not too common in metalcore (they tend to show up more in deathcore, though these would be a little weak in that genre). They sound quite good!

Unfortunately, his most common vocal technique is...utterly indescribable. Rather than the harsh screams, shouts, or otherwise actually sane harsh vocals metalcore bands often use, Zalm decided that his most common harsh technique would be a weird as fuck high-pitched shriek that sounds like a fucked-up mix of black metal shrieks and deathcore highs. But no, he didn't just do that. He also has this gravelly texture to these shrieks that sounds like he is gargling rocks the ENTIRE TIME. It has to be truly heard to be believed. I actually didn't listen to this band for like a year after hearing them for the first time because they sound so bad that I dipped. I finally relistened to them and can barely tolerate them now, but they really are not good. Zalm sounds like he's about to straight-up ruin his vocal cords irreversibly during these shrieks. When a vocal technique is literally painful to listen to, it's not good. I listen to extremely low and guttural deathcore vocals frequently, and even at their most hideous, deathcore vocalists almost never sound like they are hurting themselves. When I think the vocalists of Bound in Fear, Distant, and Sold Soul sound like they are taking better care of their voices than a goddamn melodeath-core album, something has gone seriously wrong.

It cannot be stated enough how goddamn weird these vocals sound. They do not sound like they belong with these middle-of-the-road melodeath riffs and breakdowns--if anything they sound like someone who auditioned for a black metal band (or maybe a deathcore one) but had only heard like, an hour of black metal and did not practice at all. Things get worse when we go to the lyrics. See, FHttS has two specific things they write lyrics about: either they write whiny emo shit or they write super embarrassing tough-guy brocore lyrics about how they're never gonna give into to haters and fuck anyone who thinks different (credit where credit is due though--their third and final LP was far worse, being almost nothing but cringe-worthy brocore trash, but that's another review for another time). This is seriously how this album begins:

We are Feed her to the Sharks!

We've come a long way
Come so far
Won't rest till we get what we deserve
We won't rest, with this breath
I scream from the top of my lungs
We will triumph
From the bottom of my heart
We won't rest

Risen from a Savage Sea
Of broken corpses and treachery
We have a secret, the will to survive
The weak choke and die
But we are still standing...


I have never liked these kinds of lyrics. I can tolerate them best in very hardcore-esque deathcore, but otherwise, metalcore like its parents genres is far too dark of a genre to work with uplifting lyrics like this. At the very least, the kind of metalcore that FHttS plays; a more poppy post-hardcore-leaning kind might be able to get away with this, but probably not even then. But it's not just the kind of music that gets in the way here: Zalm's vocals do not fit this kind of lyrical style at all. Zalm sounds like a 16-year-old black metal kid recording in his room when his parents are away from work--the only kind of lyrics that work with his fucked-up gravel screams are emo shit and embarrassing black metal edginess. Admittedly, the rest of the lyrics are like that, but oof. I am far more critical of the lyrics on this album because the following LP is legendarily worse, and this one laid down the framework for Zalm to write some truly embarrassing trash. His cleans are usually emo whining which is far more bearable.

That's Savage Seas in a nut-shell. It's a bog-standard melodeath core album, with some absolutely baffling decisions. Every good decision, such as the ferocity of the breakdowns, the good clean vocals, and the catchy guitarwork (when the production will actually let you hear it) is undercut by bad decisions: the production fronts the vocals and chuggy guitars so much the lead riffs get buried, Zalm's harsh vocals are 20% good stuff and 80% truly baffling, the lyrics ping-pong between emo whining (good) and embarrassing jack-off brocore (absolutely terrible), and finally...there's nothing really standout about the album, at least not in a good way. Savage Seas if anything demonstrates how this style of metalcore was running out of steam--the fact that this released the same year as the monumental metalcore masterpiece that was ERRA's Augment (effectively the Obscura of the genre if I may be an absurd fanboy) is staggering. Savage Seas is a relic, and was in its time anyway. This kind of metalcore needed to take a step back and get its bearings at the time, and the fact that recent albums such as As I Lay Dying's Shaped By Fire are so amazing is a perfect example of how just a few years away can make a genre feel fresh again. Savage Seas can't even play on nostalgia like those old-school metalcore bands--this came out merely seven years ago! This album is like the gas station pizza of metalcore--sure, it's tasty enough, but come on, at least go to Pizza Hut or Domino's if you want trashy cheap pizza.

Neqriem play pretty bog-standard technical deathcore, though they have some unique flourishes nonetheless. The <i>tone</i> of their music (not merely their guitar tone) is quite heavily metallic, with a darker and more death metal ambience to their riffs. This also applies to the production, which does sound quite amateurish, but in a more death metal way: the guitars are heavily fronted and sit alongside the vocals, unlike a lot of -core which fronts the vocals and puts the guitars in the background. Unfortunately, the production isn't stellar: it's a bit hard to describe, but these three songs sound as if each instrument is playing besides each other, not coherently mixed into a holistic whole. I won't pretend I know anything about music production, but it's as if each track was mixed in a slightly different way, giving the music a slight "disconnected" feeling. There is almost no background ambience either: this music sounds as if I'm sitting in a cavernous room with the band members right in front of me. This is by no means a deal-breaker, but I am one of those awful people who loves crystal-clean production drenched in ambience, so it does dampen the music a bit for me. Listen to a band like the Hopewell Furnance and you'll see what I mean: their music is incredibly spacious and immersive, and I like my loud guitar music to be like that. One particular instance where it really hampers the music, though, is the breakdown middle of the second track, <i>Forever Enslaved</i>. The band tries to do one of those slooooooow chuggy breakdowns with a big emphasis on the spaces between the notes, and the production means it just comes off as unintentionally goofy as shit (the silly as hell gurgling vocals that are intelligible enough to understand the words and therefore sound like a dude just talking really weirdly and not an inhuman force of nature doens't help). The other main casualty are the drums (which must be programmed, given that MA doesn't list a drummer) which often just kind get buried by the vocals and the guitars doing their stuff--the bass drum is weirdly inaudible a lot of the time since the rhythm guitar is usually chugging along with it way louder.

One of the most reliably “meh” albums/bands of all time - 50%


This album has a bit of a reputation. The conceit is that this is where the dreaded ‘norsecore’ style finally crystalized, the band eschewing a lot of the variety and atmosphere supposedly found on the previous two albums. Now, this appears true at first sight. The general tempo is noticeably higher and Legion’s vocal lines, unlike those of his predecessors, are peppered throughout the album whether the music calls for them or not. Certainly, the nursery rhyme stylings of the infamous “Darkness it Shall Be” are ridiculous. The average riff on this album is ever so slightly less melodic than before. But these elements and their contrast with the band’s previous stylistic elements are often overstated. Aside from some mediocre dabbling in death metal early on, the band never changed that much. Those of the Unlight was not a masterpiece of atmosphere, and by contrast, Heaven Shall Burn is not mere senseless pounding. Instead, it has other problems, but let me not get ahead of myself.

The changes Marduk goes through are incremental. Heaven Shall Burn is slightly more polished than Opus Nocturne. Combine that with the focus shifting, very slightly, from half-hearted attempts to assemble albums that take you on a journey to, I assume, a more honest approach of simply presenting an unrelated collection of songs which are meant to whip you up into a frenzy, and you can tell why the album has gained notoriety as the point where Marduk either goes wrong or simply figures where their strengths lie. The clearer production, although Marduk was never exactly raw, in theory, should bring the riffs to the harsh light of day, do away with the atmospherics for the most part, and make for a more physically imposing release. All fine and well in theory, but does it work?

In reality, even with said changes, this becomes just another Marduk album, but one that’s particularly illustrative of why this band had a reputation of tedious mediocrity for so long, until the Mortuus albums revived them a bit, whether deservedly or not. Heaven Shall Burn displays most of the tricks Marduk has to offer, sitting at a mid-point between their earnest attempts at Nordic black metal and their later intent to provide a Reign in Blood equivalent for the black metal age.

The band has a seemingly bottomless reserve of black metal riffs that are ‘just right’. They’re slightly melancholic, but they also try to be warlike, again, slightly so. A bit ominous, but just so. Imposing and hypnotic – only in theory. In short, the sum total of every black metal riff ever, as if the band was trying to demonstrate the building blocks of the genre, without attempting to actually construct anything meaningful out of them. Throughout the album, nothing sounds off. Marduk is nothing if not competent. But try to focus on any of these riffs and there’s precious little of note. Some are slower than others – the band is notorious for its supposed overreliance on ultra speed and consequently praised whenever they slow down, as if the songwriting quality increases for that reason alone – it doesn’t. Slow or fast, Marduk’s riffs, song structures and album pacing consistently stop short of inducing any response other than “this rocks… I guess”. Because it doesn’t really even rock that much. It kind of jumps around hyperactively in the background, beckoning to you to join and get wild, but all in vain.

Some attempts at making things interesting are there. It must be admitted that “Glorification of the Black God”, though not composed of anything extraordinary in terms of riffs (even with all the notorious borrowing) or vocal lines, is still an effective song overall. Sometimes they stumble onto these songs that just seem to be more memorable than what they’re usually capable of. These are exceptions, though. For example, “The Black Tormentor of Satan” tries to seduce you with a riff that is definitely designed to suck you in with its painstakingly crafted melody, but there’s also a bit of a problem there. The melody is telegraphed from a mile away. It’s as if the band knows the listener might get bored midway through the album, so they’re scrambling to prevent the attention from drifting away. Like so many things on this album, it’s a nice gesture, but the riff fails to make an impact and the song ultimately goes nowhere. Likewise, “Dracul Va Domni…” lowers the pace, but once the novelty wears off, it’s just another Marduk song.

So this album/band is not about variety and what little atmosphere of occult forces being involved in some kind of a medieval battle it manages to conjure is done much better by myriad other black metal bands. That’s fine, but what is it about then? It must be their much-touted and self-professed relentlessness, emphasizing the physicality of black metal at the expense of its more esoteric ambitions? Would that it were so, in the words of Stephen Fry. As I’ve already hinted, this is one of the biggest myths about the band, that the absence of any notable subtleties is compensated for by its sheer aggression, purporting to put the listener into physical submission almost.

It’s a good marketing angle, but, for all the band’s promise to be some kind of an unrelenting black metal machine, a musical equivalent to a constant artillery barrage, even pretty intense albums like this fail to heat up the blood. It’s not a big mystery as to why, either; the players are certainly working up a sweat, but what good is it when the songs never climax or even manage to maintain the intensity throughout? Maybe that is the point? Getting shelled by a faceless enemy, each hit the same as the one before, with the sole purpose of wearing out the target? Yeah, but that’s where the metaphor breaks, because this is not a matter of life and death, it’s music, and all Marduk manages is to lose the listener’s attention. Unless the audience is extraordinarily impressionable, you can’t simply beat them into submission by providing an aural equivalent of a constant beating. You have to communicate something and violence alone is not enough; even if all you want to communicate is violence, you have to find a way to hook the listener in, otherwise their attention is easily turned elsewhere. That’s why I think the common criticism of the band being monotonous for its sheer force is off the mark. It’s not that they are exhausting and that the sound is unchanging; it’s that it fades into the background too easily.

Ultimately, the band’s talent, if it can be called that, is in always being able to keep their head above the water. At no point will they fail so miserably that you’ll be forced to ask “what the hell was that?” There’s a certain standard to the band’s basic sound, which, once it was established, was never allowed to deteriorate, making Marduk as reliable as a bag of chips. The problem is that at some point you might want something more out of music.

And so Marduk goes on to this day, lineup changes and all, having become something of a black metal equivalent to Overkill – a band that initially struggled to gain attention in its native scene among their much more creative and imaginative peers, but also a band that never went away, that persevered by muscle alone and that now, when the originators, innovators and those who perfected the genre are either broken up or changed beyond recognition, serves as a direct link to the ‘golden age’. Points for effort and stamina, but little beyond that.

This album has a bit of a reputation. The conceit is that this is where the dreaded ‘norsecore’ style finally crystalized, the band eschewing a lot of the variety and atmosphere supposedly found on the previous two albums. After dabbling semi-successfully with death metal in the spirited, but underwhelming Dark Endless, Marduk produced two albums of pretty standard black metal for the time, now usually seen as some of their most enduring contributions to the genre. The story goes that, when Legion entered, the overall pace went up and some subtleties were abandoned in favor of a more monotonous and, in theory, more intense attack.

Now, this appears true at first sight. The general tempo is indeed noticeably higher and Legion’s vocal lines, unlike those of his predecessors, are peppered throughout the album whether the music calls for them or not. Certainly, the nursery rhyme stylings of the infamous “Darkness it Shall Be” are ridiculous. The average riff on this album is ever so slightly less melodic than before. But these elements and their contrast with the band’s previous stylistic elements are often overstated. The truth is that the band never changed that much. Neither Those of the Unlight nor Opus Nocturne were exactly masterpieces of atmosphere, and by contrast, Heaven Shall Burn is not mere senseless pounding. Instead, it has other problems.

The more polished production of Heaven Shall Burn, combined with said changes in the band’s approach, seemingly aims to whip up the listener into a frenzy, instead of half-heartedly trying to assemble an album that takes you on a journey. Consequently, you can tell why the album has gained notoriety as the point where Marduk either goes wrong or simply figures out where their strengths lie. The clearer production, although Marduk was never exactly raw, in theory, should bring the riffs to the harsh light of day, do away with the atmospherics for the most part, and make for a more physically imposing release.

It doesn’t work, though, because, for all the band’s promise to be some kind of an unrelenting black metal machine, a musical equivalent to a constant artillery barrage, albums like this fail to heat up the blood. It’s not a big mystery as to why, either; the players are certainly working up a sweat, but what good is it when the songs never climax or even manage to maintain the intensity throughout? Unless the audience is extraordinarily impressionable, you can’t simply beat them into submission by providing an aural equivalent of a constant beating. You have to communicate something and violence alone is not enough. Even if all you want to communicate is violence, you have to find a way to hook the listener in, otherwise their attention is easily turned elsewhere. That’s why I think the common criticism of the band being monotonous for its sheer force is off the mark. It’s not that they are exhausting and that the sound is unchanging; it’s that it fades into the background too easily.

The band has a seemingly bottomless reserve of black metal riffs that are ‘just right’. They’re slightly melancholic, but they also try to be warlike, again, slightly so; imposing, but not too much. This failure to push the riffcraft beyond a certain threshold is what holds this album back. It’s as if the band was trying to present the building blocks of the genre, but lacked the ambition to construct anything meaningful out of them. Throughout the album, nothing sounds off. Marduk is nothing if not competent. But try to focus on any of these riffs and there’s precious little of note. Some are slower than others – the band is notorious for its supposed overreliance on ultra speed and consequently praised whenever they slow down, as if the songwriting quality increases for that reason alone – it doesn’t. Case in point, “Dracul Va Domni…”, which lowers the pace, but once the novelty wears off, is just another Marduk song. Slow or fast, Marduk’s riffs, song structures and album pacing consistently stop short of inducing any response other than a tentative “this rocks”, which, in reality, it barely does.

Some attempts at making things interesting are there. It must be admitted that “Glorification of the Black God”, though not composed of anything extraordinary in terms of riffs (even with all the notorious borrowing) or vocal lines, is still an effective song overall. Sometimes they stumble onto these songs that just seem to be more memorable than what they’re usually capable of. For the most part, though, even the more ambitious songs quickly get absorbed into the general mediocrity of the album. For example, “The Black Tormentor of Satan” tries to seduce you with a riff that’s unusually melodic for this band’s standards, but you will probably remain unimpressed, because the melody is telegraphed from a mile away. The admittedly cynical reading is that, for fear of losing the listener midway through the album, Marduk are scrambling to prevent the attention from drifting away. Like so many things on this album, it’s a nice gesture, but the riff fails to make an impact and the song ultimately goes nowhere.

Ultimately, the band’s talent is in always being able to keep their head above the water. At no point will they fail so miserably that you’ll be forced to ask “what the hell was that?” There’s a certain standard to the band’s basic sound, which, once it was established, was never allowed to deteriorate, making Marduk as reliable as a bag of chips. The problem is that at some point you might want something more out of music.

And so Marduk goes on to this day, lineup changes and all; a band that initially struggled to gain attention in its native scene among their much more creative and imaginative peers, but also a band that never went away, that persevered by muscle alone and that now, when the originators, innovators and those who perfected the genre are either broken up or changed beyond recognition, serves as a direct link to the ‘golden age’. Points for effort and stamina, but little beyond that.