Fires and Floods-The Voice At Your Heels

Bitter Melody Records
2012

To help get you through this Wednesday here's Philadelphia, PA's heavy metal/ hardcore band Fires & Floods. Formed in 2011, the band features a lineup with a few familiar faces. Rob Fusco (One King Down/Most Precious Blood and Recon), Matt Canning (Shai Hulud/Twilight Collective/Dark Day Dawning and xWIDOWMAKERx)) and Phil Bryer (Twlight Collective) call Fires & Floods home and while "The Voice At Your Heels" has been out for a little while already there's never a bad time in my opinion to cover a band that like this. That's especially true for any band that is said to be influenced by Slayer! While it was that Slayer influence that drew me towards this review in the first place, as it is Slayer after all, the band is equally capable of laying down some furious hardcore. In essence this would have been called crossover back in the day, but times have changed and the true nature of these sorts of bands is a little harder to define. The band's sound does come from combining the more sinister parts of  Slayer's speed/thrash attack and some punishing metallic hardcore, but it's interesting to note that these guys indulge in occasional melodic moments. That isn't to say that this is some sort of melodic hardcore as it isn't. This band boasts of being indebted to grind as well for crying out loud! It's just that there are a few moments here and there where melody comes into play on the band's first full-length album. I'm quite happy that someone took the time to send me a link to this band as it was just the thing needed to get me pumped up to tackle another hump day. Oh, by the way, you'll have to forgive the "Fires and Floods" in the title instead of the correct "Fires & Floods". It's Wednesday so even Google blogger is acting all whack!