Despite taking their name from an Escape The Fate song, Japanese quintet The Webs We Weave lean more on the metalcore/deathcore side of the metal spectrum. Having only been around for a short time, they’ve managed to release a short 3 track EP as a statement of intent for their sound. While definitely sounding somewhat rushed in places, there is potential to grow with more practice and time to gel s a unit.
Vocalist Alec is definitely an interesting topic for debate in this band. His harsh vocals are very capably performed throughout the Unforgiven EP and wouldn’t be out of place in a much more established deathcore band, with “Oh My God” a particularly good example of his work – however his clean singing leaves far too much to be desired. Luckily for the band the only song where this impacts heavily on the performance is in the title track. GeN and Ken are a real double act on the guitars, and while not delivering much in the way of originality, they bounce off each other’s performances very well while drummer Koki is the most consistently great member of the band. His drumming in “Truth Or Dare” is fantastic.
However, the production doesn’t feel quite right, as if there’s something missing. I can’t quite put my finger on what’s wrong, but there’s a sort of staleness to the feel of the record, not giving off that organic sense that most professionally recorded works do nowadays. It’s not as if this band is over-produces or relies on studio trickery either, it’s just that, presumably, their equipment wasn’t quite up to the standard one would expect nowadays.
Overall this is not a great EP. The musicians themselves show plenty of promise, but they’re held back by below par production, lack of originality and the inconsistent vocal performance of Alec. If he sticks to just screaming and they leave the clean vocal performances to someone else (if they include them at all), then they could be a very competent deathcore/metalcore band in the future, and it would be really good to see how they can realise the potential which is there in the music.
The Webs We Weave’s debut “Unforgiven EP” is out now (self released).
