Artist: It Dies Today
Label: Trustkill Records
Released: 2004
It Dies Today, a band formed in 2001 in Buffalo (USA), took three years to get their debut “The Caitiff Choir” out of their system, an album inspired by Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. To be precise, what we have here is a reissue of the album that first came out in 2004. All the tracks have been remixed, and the whole EP “Forever Scorned” (2002) has been tacked on as bonus material, plus, for good measure, a cover of Enjoy The Silence (orig. Depeche Mode). Bold and sweeping stuff, especially since the EP was re-recorded for the occasion and sounds fresh. The fact is that this is a somewhat stripped-down version of the original, so anyone used to the sound of the first pressing will have a much harder time getting used to the re-mixed sound of this reissue, which has a bit more control to it. The jump in sound is huge once you fight your way through to the extra tracks from the “Forever Scorned” EP. Those keep their raw sound, which fits the band’s urge to unleash some seriously primal metalcore wickedness like a glove.
This album has a real dose of everything. It can be confidently devilish, razor-sharp, straight-up rattling past all limits, and burning with the rage of metalcore agony, while on the flip side it’s superbly balanced with moments of melody, which the band brings in either through motifs or by switching the vocals over to a “clean” line. The combo of brutal, lower-pitched screaming, often layered over a tonnage of massive riff avalanches, shows that It Dies Today make no secret of flirting openly with elements of death and thrash metal. The guys are so convincing at stacking up aggression and brutality that the swerves into softened, melancholic melody with a tendency to slot in an epic element feel atmospherically totally unpredictable, and the touch of the extreme is so ominously emphasized and dominates the melodic moments so confidently that there’s no fear of “The Caitiff Choir” accidentally watering down into pathetic emo and jolting the listener out of their brutally intoxicating stupor.
The album opens mercilessly with the track My Promise, and the extreme metalcore traits described above spring to life instantly. The band has an excellent feel for building drama, which surges and feeds itself through jerky, choppy thrash transitions, totally unexpected yet under the band’s masterful control, proving a high level of mutual understanding, following and tightness among the members. The instrumentalists sound compact and well-drilled, united by a shared desire to manifest the brutal force you can produce in a studio today. The tracks Severed Ties Yield Severed Heads, The Radiance, Marigold, Our Desintegration and especially Naenia (generously backed by guitar harmonies) carry an epic touch thanks to that dual melody input, which fully culminates in painting this feeling, subordinated to the clean melodic vocal, within the choruses. It all gets especially thrillingly edgy as the contrast between the brutal and the melodic piles up, hitting its extreme on the album in Freak Gasoline Fight Accident, where the screaming in a dizzyingly riff-wound pre-chorus comes close to the dimensions of death metal growling.
These guys know how to complicate things considerably, and e.g. tracks averaging a good three minutes are far from simple, instead plowing through the listener’s cerebral cortex with a metalcore plow, and very effectively at that. A typical example is The Caitiff Choir Revelations. Barely three minutes of fury, but we’re witness to non-stop snappy transitions that take us through a colorful palette of motifs, flowing tastefully and logically into one another, with no time to catch your breath! Just pure thrill! The closing The Caitiff Choir: Defeatism crowns the listener with the manifestation of that complexity dosing described earlier, through which It Dies Today don’t lose their clear focus for a moment, and the red thread of the album’s fluid flow stays at a high level throughout. Because that’s taken care of, the element of surprise can live fully, which keeps the listener hooked, and so not just this track but the whole album doesn’t bore at a single point.
“The Caitiff Choir” is a hugely successful piece of work in every respect, reflecting a tremendous work drive, creative enthusiasm and the band’s hunger to prove themselves, the kind of authenticity that’s getting harder and harder to find these days. You can feel that the guys have built real bonds, with excellently functioning chemistry and unified musical views, and the energy they pour into the material convincingly proves that It Dies Today are not just another “wanna be” product, made with the sole purpose of letting a label scrape a few extra coins in the short term out of the pockets of the poor souls toiling away for the preacher. Quite the opposite! “The Caittiff Choir” is an excellent metal core album, highly varied, with outstanding transitional and atmospheric dynamics crowned with a colorfully crafted vocal approach. It Dies Today are excellent musicians who already reach, with their debut, the quality level of bands in a similar vein like Shadows Fall, Killswitch Engage or Unearth, so we can rightfully expect even more from It Dies Today in the future!
Lineup
Nicholas Brooks – vocals
Christopher Cappelli – guitar
Mike Hatalak – guitar
Steve Lemke – bass
Nick Mirusso – drums
Production
Tony Gammalo
Tracklist
1. My Promise
2. Severed Ties Yield Severed Heads
3. Radiance
4. Depravity Waltz
5. Threnody for Modern Romance
6. Marigold
7. Freak Gasoline Fight Accident
8. Caitiff Choir Revelations
9. Our Disintegration
10. Naenia
11. Caitiff Choir: Defeatism
REISSUE BONUS TRACKS (2006):
12. Sentiments Of You
13. Bridges Left Burning
14. The Requiem For Broken Hearts
15. Forever Scorned
16. Blood Stained Bed Sheet Burden
17. A Romance By The Wings Of Icarus
18. Enjoy The Silence
Album length: 73.18
