White Chapel-This is exile

Metal Blade
2008

It didn’t take me long to absorb what this band is about and yes that does mean that they are fairly limited in what they do. It’s kind of deathcore with more death metal leanings than hardcore, but both are there although I am not sure that either is complementing the other in this case. Many of the songs have some potential at the beginning with a few guitar melodies here and there, but those are mostly swept away rather unceremoniously by a wall of clicking and clanking mess. This band has three guitarists, wait, can that really be correct? Three guitarist? How many guitarists does it take to make uninspired, bloated noise? Well, the answer here is three and unfortunately the joke is on us the listener this time around. I tried hard to reach in and focus on some promising parts in this sea of repetitive chaos, but there wasn’t a whole there other than at the start of a few tracks. The drums just fall in line with a similar kind of faceless, frantic chugging as they pushed just to keep up rather than to really help define anything. The vocals are a little better as is certainly some depth to them and they probably could have been ever better with some stronger music to follow. “This is exile” is a fairly mediocre gust of wind that blows in, blows out and it’s rather difficult to really remember that much about it because they don’t really succeed at or attempt to really create that much.