Carcer City
"The Life We Have Chosen"
(Transend Records)

Oh yeah, this is Machine Head meets extreme metal a la Job For A Cowboy with eccentric fretboard work, alternating roaring / emo vox and of course, chunky dervish riffs that cut by the bucketload! Besides the brutality, these plucky Brits show lots of maturity in their material from driven 'Signals' dealing with escapism from the past to finding oneself to the haunting 'A Prisoner To the Years' that deals with guilt that has built up and weighed down on a persons spirit over the years with the ultimate consequence to my personal fave 'The Life We Have Chosen', a 2 song story which appears to be based on a soldier's perspective of war, the first part of which focuses on the pumping adrenaline and build up to conflict and the second of which is a reflection of his life as he is dying. All in all this is an ambitious debut from a youthful band with plenty of promise and a lifestory to tell.

-Shan Siva