Before their bounce back from obscurity within the deathcore genre, Lorna Shore lingered in no-man’s land, struggling to find their footing with a revolving door of vocal changes since Tom Barber abandoned the group for Chelsea Grin. Then 2021 came with the release of ...And I Return To Nothingness which not re-opened the door for them but amplified their popularity to new heights and planted them at the helm of modern deathcore with Will Ramos’ vocal structure.
Now the band have released I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me and all eyes have been firmly fixed upon them as they attempt to follow up 2022’s Pain Remains. And, have they? Well, you could say that. As they’ve not stuck to their own formula.
“The first trick they have is raising the bar for deathcore to heights thought unimaginable 10 years ago.”
A deathcore band opening their album with a seven-minute piece is unheard of. But get those ears ready, as half of the album exceeds that. ‘Prison Of Flesh’ is the first song you’re greeting by. And instead of a polite welcoming to the function, you’re thrown into a gauntlet and battered for the entire duration. This continues for the following 9 songs. But it’s Lorna Shore, you know Ramos and co aren’t going to give you stadium filled bubble-gum pop. But as dark as the album title is along with the depressing cover art, they’ve got a few tricks up their sleeves.
The first trick they have is raising the bar for deathcore to heights thought unimaginable 10 years ago. The riffs from dual guitarists Adam De Micco & Andrew O’Connor are beefier, backed with a modicum of melodic flavouring to let you recover from the gut punch from ‘Oblivion’. The band do show their melodic side on ‘In Darkness’ with a heavenly choir backing Ramos, that honestly feels at home during an epic battle scene. De Micco’s playing alone on this track is a testament to what he can perform when not confined to a singular guitar string.
The further you get into the album, the bigger and more beautiful the songs get. Weird thing to say about a Lorna Shore album, yes, but their songwriting and craftsmanship has doubled since Pain Remains. While we still have the breakdowns heavier than Mecha-godzillas nuts, lightning-fast double bass kicks from Austin Archey and Ramos’ gear-grinding vocals, they’ve added emotion and feeling to their music while lowering their wall-of-noise approach.
It feels like I Feel The Everblack… Is a culmination of who Lorna Shore were, birthing them into a new era of more bloodcurdling theatrics. If someone were to tell you back in 2018 that Lorna Shore would end their album with an almost 10-minute song that starts with 2-minutes of orchestral movements that could have been shaved off to one-minute, you’d wonder how many spin kicks they’d have taken to the head. But they’ve done it excellently. While a lot of die-hard fans may not find the ‘lighter’ moments to their taste, Lorna Shore have opened doors to the mainstream with combinations that, on paper, would be laughable. But you can’t deny, it’s the best album of their career to date.