This Is The Six

Having won pretty much every award a new heavy band can get, these Yorkshire lads had quite the hype built up about their first full-length. Long story short – the album surpasses expectations, to call it a ‘game changer’ would be no exaggeration and the expectation that this album will be able to reach beyond the traditional metal audiences is entirely justified. After one listen you can understand the critical acclaim that the band is being showered with.

The album straddles heavy music with one leg over hardcore and the other over metal, with just a hint of nu-metal in there for good measure. The boys throw out common (and often justified) criticisms of the hardcore genre; Loz Taylor’s vocals are confidently passionate rather than whiny and the lyrics scream motivated anger rather than angsty complaint. The guitar parts, too, are never sluggish and always inspire movement through technicality and insanity of rhythm, rather than the now-stereotypical single chord chug that hardcore has become depressingly synonymous with (cough…Emmure…cough).

While She Sleeps, however, have managed to retain the elements of hardcore and metal that make the genres so good. The album nicely rips your face to pieces, and then reassembles it time after time in a flurry of insane riffs and powerful, sometimes melodic gang vocals. From unstoppable behemoths such as the opener ‘Dead Behind The Eyes’ to melodic nostalgia-songs like ‘Seven Hills’, the band explore every corner of their genre with confidence and what you get is an album that cannot be accused of sounding like-for-like track-by-track.

This album obviously isn’t going to appeal to everyone, and maybe airing one of the singles at 11am on Fern Cotton’s Radio 1 show was a mistake, but if you’re into hardcore, metal, nu metal, punk or even alt-rock give the album a listen. I won’t even tell you to watch out for Sleeps in the future because they’re already very much there, and I’m going to see these boys in Birmingham after term starts, wish me luck.

**Similar To:** Last Witness, Counterparts