It’s been a while since UK mob A Trust Unclean battered our eardrums, four years between EP’s to be precise. Seeking to jumpstart their career, they’re self-releasing an EP, Reality Relinquished, with a real Jack-Nicholson-head-stuck-through-a-hole-in-the-door Whitechapel savagery to announce their return, which, in the main, they do in style.
When A Trust Unclean get it right, like on ‘Feckless Tradition’, they’re a raging, swirling, diverse ADD mass of deathcored Slipknotisms, confident enough in breaking out into atmospheric progressive guitaring, enhanced by some delightful sci-fi leadwork that spirals back to a violent chug; ‘Perverse Agenda’ curls into a juddering violent Cryptopsy-ed verse, broken by ubiquitious slab-paced stomps, a refined melodic build to solo under the chorus.
Business continues to pick up as we traverse the core of the EP, Scott Horne demonstrates his percussive abilities, not overusing blasts or kicks, like the demon carriage driver only letting the hellhounds off the leash intermittently and when it’s best needed; such as on the title track where technical interchanges sputter before a riff that feels deliberately restrained at the leash is tightly reigned in before exploding into the chorus.
All this is a relief as the EP actually kicks off with a tired, cliché car-crash of deathcore 101 – electronic build into a stop/start staccato riff, downtuned tech metal riff-to-squeal, sub bass leading to a brainless breakdowns; it’s a disjointed mess. When hanging around the lowest common denominator end of deathcore this is by numbers, but fortunately, due to the frequency with which the band flit from idea to idea, this occurs, track one aside, at brief intervals only.
Arrangements can, at times, feel they’re borne from a “chuck it all in the blender” approach to song-writing, though this leads to songs taking unexpected and interesting turns and when A Trust Unclean are at their most progressive and creative is when they are at their best; sprinkling deathcore tropes on top, like a demonic piri-piri, rather than utilizing their more generic ideas as the main sauce.
7.0/10
STEVE TOVEY
