Album/EP

Enterprise Earth - Death: An Anthology (Album Review)

Walladmin

Heavy Metal Wordsmith

Jan 30, 2024

7 min read

Enterprise Earth – Death: An Anthology
Released: February 2, 2024

Lineup:

Gabe Mangold // Guitar, Backing Vocals, Production
Brandon Zackey // Drums
Travis Worland // Vocals
Dakota Johnson // Bass

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Increasingly, contemporary deathcore acts are faced with an all too familiar dilemma. While swinging to strike a balance between adhering to tradition and embracing innovation, the allure of turning out crowd-pleasing, breakdown-laden anthems often proves too irresistible. And for enthusiasts in search of something fresh and original, it can often feel like we’re being repeatedly beaten over the head with the same blunt, monotonous instrument.

Enterprise Earth, in this respect, deserves recognition for largely sidestepping these clichéd genre tropes on Death: An Anthology, even if it’s accomplished with a discernable hint of reservation.

The band’s journey to this point has yielded mixed results. Their debut effort Patient 0 was rudimentary at best, and follow ups Embodiment and Luciferous showcased only modest glimpses of spontaneity. It was not until 2022’s The Chosen that Enterprise Earth finally secured a solid foothold in the wall, and managed to pull themselves up above the rest of the pack. With its renewed focus on melodicism, a willingness to experiment with audacious song structures, and its diversified sonic repertoire, the record proffered a point of difference, one that helped distinguish it from Enterprise Earth’s back catalogue, and importantly, the rest of deathcore’s modern troupe.

Encouragingly, Death: An Anthology continues on this creative trajectory, leaning further into the progressive areas of the band’s sound, whilst remaining in touchpoint to their established deathcore roots. With all that said, there’s still a lingering sense that Enterprise Earth were hesitant to take that next all-in plunge; if only they had, the results may have proved revelatory.

‘Abyss’ stands as a monolithic opener, building from ethereal grounds to euphoric heights, with every indication that something significant is brewing. However, instead of seizing on this palpable momentum, ‘Face of Fear’ gets bogged down in sluggish, djent-inspired riffing. We’re left to dredge through the first three-quarters of the track to arrive at its scintillating closing passages, which both dazzle and overwhelm in a pulse-pumping cacophony. ‘The Reaper’s Servant’ (featuring Spite vocalist, Darius Tehrani) suffers the same ill-advised fate, launching out the gates with a galloping stampede of breakneck drumming and dynamic guitar work, only to revert back to the same lethargic, uninspired chugging (and that’s in spite of the virtuosic leads that rip through the middle).

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King of Ruination’ on the other hand, very nearly hits the mark, owing primarily to its hook’s earworm quality. Pummeling breakdowns stir with an intensity that clasps you by the throat, and never loosens the grip across the track’s entire, suffocating duration. Travis Worland summons his vocals from a primal place, producing sounds that should transcend the capabilities of an ordinary human. That’s before the album’s zenith, ‘Casket of Rust’ unleashes a havoc-wreaking force that leaves nothing but pure destruction in its wake. The tempestuous chaos, though seeming disorderly, is deftly navigated by Enterprise Earth, who approach this dissonance with orchestrated mastery. Densely layered walls of sound, de-escalate into immense breakdowns, which in turn transition into unnerving interludes of pulsing bass guitar, before finally melting into dulcet acoustic tones; the sonic breadth is staggering!

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‍Death: An Anthology ventures into interesting territory from here. ‘I, Divine’ initially dwells in eerie spaces that are poised to make your skin crawl, only to later transpose into grand, life-affirming peaks. From left field, ‘Accelerated Demise’ morphs from a speed metal monster, into a full-blown prog smorgasbord, intermittently settling back into familiar, single-note chugging when there is seemingly nowhere else for it to go. The saccharine cleans and metalcore-inspired guitar runs that permeate ‘Blood And Teeth’ are a tad jarring at this point in the album, and are they same elements that cause ‘Curse of Flesh’ (featuring Matthew Heafy of Trivium) to end the record on a somewhat underwhelming note.

While the critique might appear stringent, it stems from the intriguing potential that Enterprise Earth displays, and consequently, the unfulfilled possibilities of what Death: An Anthology might have achieved. Ultimately, there’s comfort in knowing that the trajectory is aligned with the intended course, and any diversions will (in time) lead to that fateful promised land.

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