Boris the Blade have carved out a little piece of the deathcore pie all for themselves. Warpath (Siege Music) is the band’s second full-length release and continues the same upward maturity that their previous work has shown.

All the groundwork of a solid deathcore release is here, technical guitar work, guttural vocals and huge blast beats, all tied up with an endearing sense of dread. This is of course nothing new for the genre, nor is it something signalling the future of deathcore, it is however a collection of tracks which are simply written excellently.

Tracks such as ‘Misery’ and ‘Omens’ are the typical fodder found on post-2012 Deathcore releases, but the intricate details found between the layers of modern production breathe new life into otherwise rehashed riffs. ‘Omens’ in particular uses dual tracking for the higher vocals which works well to push them in front of the death and destruction the instrumentation offers.

Drummer Karl Steller manages to provide the links between most of the tracks, his crystal clear but brutal kick drum giving the listener something to grasp onto amongst the chaos. The production is in the same vein as much of modern metal, crisp, clear and by the numbers. However, for Warpath it works, giving room for the intricacies and melodic shifts to come to full fruition.

If a negative point was to be made against Warpath it comes from the vocals more than anything else. We live in a time where vocalists need to break through with their own, given take on their genre, and unfortunately most of Warpath lacks a vocal punch outside of the genre’s norms.

Boris the Blade may not the reinvented anything on Warpath, but they have streamlined that wheel and given it a push back towards the heights of deathcore not seen for over half a decade.

8.0/10

JACK WEBB