Review: Reject the Sickness “The New Chapter”

The New Chapter is what would happen if those obscure death metal bands from the late 80s-early 90s had better production, but still kept their dark edge.

And luckily, it combines the best elements of both modern melodic death metal bands, and obscure old school death metal. We have a crisp and clear production that highlights the music’s dark undertones. The thick and crunchy riffs have a lot of energy and melody but also a lot of aggression. The vocals are hoarse grunts that can be as fast and aggressive as the riffs, and yet they are still easy to understand. And the best is that this combination actually works pretty well.

The songs are good. There are some really heavy parts, but also some epic, super-headbangable choruses. They manage to be both catchy and dark. Just the first track, Reset, is proof of that, with its brutal intro and catchy chorus. Or the last one, Burning Soil, which starts with screaming the title, followed by really fast drumming and heavy riffs, that sound a bit like groove metal or even a deathcore breakdown at first, and then turn into melodic death metal. They keep their sense of melody but they’re still the heaviest on the EP.

They can also combine their catchiness and brutality to a dark and strange atmosphere. Again, the intro to Reset shows that, but the best example is in the following track Disconnect. Its beginning almost reaches black metal territory, with its dark, eerie synths. Then it turns into a spoken word part about how oppressive religious schools can be (sampled from a movie, maybe?), before turning into a typical Reject the Sickness melodic but angry death metal song about the dangerous effects of religion on the human psyche. The eerie synths are back somewhere in the middle of the song. The combination of the fast riffs, the eerie intro and outro, and the spoken part create a very original song that will keep haunting you for quite some time. This is the most ambitious track on the EP, and probably the best.

So this EP is a nice selection of good songs, from what seems like a pretty talented band. With its blend of aggressiveness and melody, this is pretty close to death metal perfection, all subgenres and eras of death metal included. The band has some good ideas, and can do very different types of song. There is some heavy stuff, some catchy stuff and some strange and haunting stuff, and all that on only three songs. But it’s three songs you’ll definitely be glad you heard.