When yet another massive riff, this time during the early stages of track nine ‘World Eater’, hits – you know the sort… the type of riff that makes your face do the same involuntary wince/”oooooo” combo as sucking a lemon straight after brushing your teeth might – the smile can’t help but break out on your face: The Conquering (Spinefarm Records) isn’t just Employed To Serve upping the ante; their fourth album goes deeeep.
Employed to Serve has dropped a new single. “Mark of The Grave”fromtheoir upcoming new album. Conquering is due for release on September 17th 2021, will be Employed To Serve’s second full-length album on the Spinefarm label. Fresh off of their stellar performance at Download Pilot Festival, Employed To Serve has announced their new album Conquering via Spinefarm Records, due out September 17th. Pre-orders are live now at the link below. Check out “Mark of The Grave” now!Continue reading
Fresh off of their stellar performance at Download Pilot Festival, Employed To Serve has announced their new album Conquering via Spinefarm Records, due out September 17th. Pre-orders are live now at the link below. Watch the video for the debut single “Exist” now! Continue reading
Hardcore music, and its derivatives, are going through something of a renaissance. With the release of 2017’s Forever (Roadrunner Records), Code Orange astonishingly brought a fresh ideation to a genre already brimming with brilliant bands. It wasn’t so much a reinvigoration as it was a rewriting of the rulebook in a manner that has seen many bands attempting to play catch up or ape the style. Not every Hardcore influenced band is trying to rip off the Pennsylvanians however, and one such example is New York quartet, The Machinist.Continue reading
Employed To Serve are back with a new single and video for their track “Harsh Truth”. The song is a sign of support to those dealing with depression, anxiety, and bullying. The track comes from the new EtS album and Spinefarm Records debut Eternal Forward Motion, out May 10th. Watch the video right now! Continue reading
UK extreme Metal band Employed To Serve has just dropped a bomb new single and video for their track ‘Force Fed’. The song comes from the just-announced new album Eternal Forward Motion, due May 10th via Spinefarm Records. The band has announced some headline shows in the UK to celebrate the release, and festival dates at Groezrock in April, Hellfest and Jera On Air in June. Pre-order the album at the link below. Check out the clip for ‘Force Fed’ now!Continue reading
Hailing from what is fast becoming the new metal hotbed of the UK, Southampton, come post-hardcore quintet I, The Mapmaker with their self-released E.P. Searching. Seeing that this was produced by Lewis Johns (Employed To Serve, Rolo Tomassi etc) I was already intrigued as to what the band would have to offer and knew that wasn’t going to be a generic by numbers band.Continue reading
Whilst all the talk around ‘Technical’ Hardcore may well be surrounding Palm Reader at the moment, and deservedly so, don’t let that stop you exploring other releases of the same ilk. Delivering that violently erratic smash-mouth style a la The Dillinger Escape Plan, Employed To Serve’s breed of music will hit you square between the eyes right from the word go.
The opening few tracks pretty much set the tone for the rest of the album – the band doing their upmost to not go down a path whereby you can predict what comes next. They’ve shunned the idea of a ‘normal’ song structure and instead launch through complicated arrangements, and mind bending riffs. A lot of the time, this level of description ends up putting people off checking this kind of music out, and like many of the bands playing a similar style will attest to, it can take time to get in to it. If you take the time around an album like this you will feel rewarded and some of these tracks won’t just become fodder to skip through on shuffle. Alongside the Dillinger type vibes on this album, there is an all round sense of bleakness, something made instantly plain by the track names, ‘Watching Films To Forget I Exist’ and ‘Greyer Than You Remember’ serving as clear examples. The absolute star of the show across the album is vocalist Justine Jones who delivers a performance containing so much venom you get a genuine sense that had she not been involved it would have been a lesser album as a result.
Overall then, this is some seriously high quality Hardcore music, whether you want to throw them into the Technical Hardcore bracket or Post Hardcore, it doesn’t matter – Greyer Than You Remember (Holy Roar) genuinely an exciting album which will hopefully hoist Employed To Serve on to more of people’s radars.
8.5/10
TOM DONNO