Lista de Bandas Metalcore Shake Well Before Goliath

Shake Well Before, sure, the name may sound silly, illegitimate or even seems like a parody band, but the metalcore that these guys play is all but immature. Goliath is their debut EP and I must say, it is looking good. The moment that I pressed play, I knew that I’ve stumbled across one of those bands who I would like to keep my eye on in the future because they have potential. In this glorious age where styles of trendy metalcore such as Bullet for My Valentine or Asking Alexandria prospers, we don’t see many bands out there who attempt to push the boundaries of the genre. Sure, we have Parkway Drive, I Killed the Prom Queen, Beyond the Shore and such, but do you know how hard it is to find new bands like this? It’s extremely difficult, because most of the younglings tend to follow a more trendy style of metalcore (and I don’t blame them, why not do what everyone else is doing?) rather than a more hardcore style.

Now you probably read the first paragraph and thought “what is this hardcore metalcore you speak of?” Well, let me tell you, it’s a branch of metalcore that I perceive to be the link between metalcore and deathcore, a sort of intermediate step where it’s too hard to be regular metalcore (such as; Bullet For My Valentine or Trivium), but not hard enough or have the elements of deathcore. Well known bands that I would classify into this category would be Parkway Drive and I Killed The Prom Queen. In fact, I think it is a fair assumption that Shake Well Before is heavily influenced from these two Aussie metalcore giants, if not, then I guess it’s simply a coincidence. The vocal style, the tone of guitars, the riffs themselves and the general tone of the band all give off a sort of Australian metalcore aesthetic. I say Australian metalcore because this style is most common in the aussie scene (don’t believe me? check out the scene for yourself). But I digress, you know, after listening to “Shake Well Before” for a while I realise how appropriate the name actually is for the band because the breakdowns and potency of the music, shakes the living shit out of you. I find myself constantly bobbing my head to the breakdowns and regular passages. And in my perfectly honest opinion, anything worth bobbing your head to, is worth another round.

The musicianship and skill Goliath is quite spectacular to the ears. Usually when people think of metalcore, they think “lol, metalkaw is soo easy 2 play” but if you listen to Goliath’s depth in all of it’s glory and finer details, you’ll realise how technical Shake Well Before’s music really is. This is fairly uncommon for a metalcore band to achieve, because they all end up sounding like some kind of retarded mathcore band and I think mathcore is already dead. Not only is the Shake Well Before’s music rather technical, but the momentum is maintained throughout the entire course of Goliath. This keeps the excitement constantly up high, which means that all parts of Goliath are mosh worthy, which really makes me want to see Shake Well Before live. There are also enough twists and turns throughout the EP which makes it seem less redundant as some of the other releases out there. There is always some slight change in riffs, vocal style or simple atmosphere which keeps my attention to the music and doesn’t let it go right until the end. There is just something about the way the music transitions from different passages, which leaves the music’s momentum flowing, as well as changing the nature of the track. I cannot really emphasise how dense the music is in this EP, all 13 minutes are worth listening to, not a single second wasted.

I’ve heard lots of metalcore in my time, and I do consider myself to be a relatively experienced listener to the genre (however, I know there are addicts out there who surpass me by far). But I do have enough understanding, to know what I like and what I don’t like, and I cannot shake the slight niggling aspects of Shake Well Before which don’t sit the best with me. The first one I’d like to point out is the monotonous and cyclic atmosphere of each track. Sure, each track individually is an interesting journey, but when you string them all together into an EP such as Goliath, you get a slight feeling of Déjà vu. It seems like the same: riffs, atmosphere, vocals and tone are constantly being recycled though out the course of Goliath and sure they’re awesome, but just because they are awesome, doesn’t mean it can’t get old. It just makes me wonder if Goliath had any direction to begin with, I mean let’s look at the track titles: “Bear, Gimme My Steak Back” , “Insomnia” , “When Anger Meets Rage” , “SSDD” and “We're Melting Away”… it none of the track titles seem to have any correlation to another whatsoever. I’m not saying that Goliath was a half arsed job, because the music says otherwise, but I just wonder what the writer was getting at sometimes. As a result of this monotony, I find little to say about Goliath, apart from the fact that they sound like one of my favourite bands ever (Parkway Drive).

The last thing that tuned me slightly off about Goliath is the use to synths to distort the vocals. No, I’m not talking about auto-tune, I’m talking about synths which make the voice sound like it’s vibrating. Still don’t know what I’m on about? Try this, find the nearest electric fan, turn it up to 2nd or 3rd speed, now talk into it… you now know what some of the vocals in Goliath sound like. I seriously don’t know why this was put in this EP, I don’t know if it was intended or maybe it was a recording error, it didn’t do the vocals or the music any justice. What’s really weird about this, is that there isn’t anything else in Goliath which tells us they’re trying to introduce synths into their music and as a result, it’s juxtaposed with the otherwise-sterile metalcore. I don’t know what Shake Well Before was aiming at by distorting the vocals a bit, but it was atrocious… atrociously terrible that is.

Although I did find a few things that I didn’t particularly like about Goliath, the good things about this EP outweighed the bad things by a lot. The speed and ferocity of the music saved Goliath from being a mediocre release (although it is slightly above mediocre). The strength and potency that the EP contains in unbelieve about, it brings some much needed energy into a genre dominated by softer bands who think adding a breakdown into their songs, automatically makes it more “energetic”. However, where Goliath falls down, is how plain the EP is overall. Sure, the first and second tracks are interesting, however past third the ears can get a little fatigued from hearing the same things over and over again. I recommend the tracks “Bear, Gimme My Steak Back” and “SSDD” to the first time listeners of Shake Well Before because they have high energy and keep the vocal distortion to a minimum. I recommend Goliath to anyone who enjoys harder styles of metalcore similar to the likes of Parkway Drive. I give Shake Well Before’s Goliath EP a 15/20.