(On August 5th Nuclear Blast released a new three-song EP by Aversions Crown, and below you’ll find DGR‘s review of the beast.)
The story of Australian deathcore group Aversions Crown‘s career is going to be a fascinating one to dive into when they call it a day. They may eventually find a modicum of stability before things wrap up just yet, but for now Aversions Crown are a band who have four full-lengths and a smattering of EPs to their name, and ever since the release of their album Tyrant, have had a different vocalist in each one.
Whether it is by virtue of the frontman shuffle that tends to happen to many a deathcore group or the recruitment of one into a more popular group, Aversions Crown have had a different talent behind the microphone for the requisite nigh-unintelligible sounds nearly every time.
Believe it not, I’ve actually had the opportunity to see these sci-fi inflected deathcore bruisers live before. Even though distance and time is a motherfucker for groups touring from the island-continent nation, they were able to do it a few times in the days of their Tyrant and Xenocide releases, if memory serves. In seeing them, it honestly felt like I was witnessing the future of deathcore – the multilayered guitar wall, the inhumanly fast drumming, the eerier melodies layered overhead and world-destroying aesthetic had the band aligned closer to a tech-death group than an outright beatdown-friendly band – but it seemed as if the genre itself had other ideas.
The high speed and technical acrobatics that Aversions Crown specialized in were dropped in the genre for slowed-down groove and empty-space-filling snare-drum hits passing as breakdowns. It was not something Aversions Crown were immune from either, as there was a period when it seemed all of their ilk were slowing down in favor of a Fit For An Autopsy-esque hammering. Though their album Hell Will Come For Us All wasn’t perfect there were still an arguable five or six ass-beaters within the bounds of that release – including the title track and a few of the songs that followed it.
Still, the pattern must be upheld and after a surprisingly long period of dormancy for this crew – though one wonders how much is due to circumstance – Aversions Crown returned in early August with the release of a new EP entitled A Voice From The Outer Dark that once again casts the band in a new light with a new vocalist at the helm.
The name Alex Teyen will be familiar to many a deathcore fanatic through his work in the now semi-dormant Black Tongue as well as the proto-version of Infant Annihilator ages ago. The UK-based vocalist’s stylistic delivery here is a fuckton faster than what people might be used to hearing him do, although what is interesting is that in the grand halls of the nigh-unintelligible vocal olympics that have come to dominate the genre, what is being uttered and exhorted here is somewhat easily understood by comparison. It may be that the lyrics were written to be more percussive and anthemic than most -core lyrics would loan themselves to, but there’s a fair amount of actual skull-infecting work being done on a vocal front alongside the foundation that Aversions Crown themselves are constructing.
A Voice From The Outer Dark has Aversions Crown immersed in the science-fiction destructive landscapes they were initially known for, so there’s an air of “returning to what originally worked” when it comes to this EP, but it also provides enough runway for the vocal work to go wild as we view things through the eyes of the cybernetic and the world-ending. One often finds oneself helpless when trying to fight the urge to utter the opening line of “What now, when all is said and done, King Of Kings?” that leads off the song “Deathbed Lamentations”.
Musically, Aversions Crown are a high-speed percussive wrecking ball this go around. Occupying a similar sonic space to a group like Cognizance, Aversions Crown are delivering music so intertwined and surgically precise it’s hard to imagine what actually came first with any particular idea or what part is driving what. This is an EP wherein the rhythm section is just as important as the vocals riding sidecar or the guitars directing each specific scene change. There is little sonic room to breathe, everything serves a purpose and that purpose is a head-on act of devastation.
It’d be tempting to view this through the lens of there being no mid-tempo fight song here, but Aversions Crown have decided their return to the proverbial fray is going to be three lightning-fast three to five minute hammerings, and they would be exiting just as quickly. Over five years for twelve and a half minutes of music is a brutal weight, but the three songs here are honed to such a sharp point that every instance of them appearing cuts through the air.
The relentless delivery of the titular song “A Voice From The Outer Dark” has been known for some time now but that high-tempo battering and bent guitar work is undeniable when it comes to working its way into your brain. You sometimes even forget there’s a back forty or so seconds of the song wherein Aversions Crown do slow down and deliver one massive breakdown-style punch to end things, because the opening two verses are so excitingly rapid that you keep returning back to that.
“Deathbed Lamentations” and “Castigation Choir” are of a similar ilk yet both provide their own moments of instrumental spotlight, whether it’s the reliance on a quick double-bass roll and machinegun vocal segment layered over it and “Castigation Choir” and its more virulent cursing of the world around it. “Castigation Choir” especially favors a start and stop mechanic that shares some similarities with how a verse from “A Voice From The Outer Dark” will seemingly burst into existence from the aether and extinguish itself just as quickly.
Yet those moments across the EP let the guitars step into the forefront, and that work would best be described as an assault. A fair share of Aversions Crown trademarks weave their way through each song in the lineup. They are masters of the eerie melody that seems to hover over the work like a shadow waiting to descend, and there’s plenty of that mixed into the overall formula here.
In spite of its original “me against the world” aesthetic, 2020’s Hell Will Come For Us All was not a massive left turn for Aversions Crown‘s overall sound. In fact, halfway through the group were basically writing the same general stuff that had come to define releases like Tyrant and Xenocide before it. It’s an album that has two distinct halves and unfortunately it seemed like that front tough-guy bit wound up getting most of the focus. An EP like A Voice From The Outer Dark, on the other hand, is going to feel like a true return to form for the band. There is a definite air of “We’re going to return to what worked for us and do the best version of that” coiling its way throughout the three songs of this EP, and it may be just what the crew need to shock the band back into life.
A Voice From The Outer Dark and its three songs are a fiery way to make a statement of “Yes, we are back,” and if this is the sort of material that is going foretell for us where Aversions Crown are looking for an eventual full-length, then A Voice From The Outer Dark holds a hell of a lot of promise.
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