Mouth of the Serpent – Manifest (2011)

Making its way out of our very crowded promo queue, today we have Mouth of the Serpent’s latest release “Manifest”. Playing Deathcore, this band from California provides six high-octane tracks that will surely have you moshing for hours. The band delivers pretty solid riffs and interesting tempo changes, but ultimately ends up sounding a lot like The Black Dahlia Murder, etc, etc. While there is nothing wrong with that if you are a fan of the genre, this release does get a bit cyclical and ends up sounding very similar.

After the typical atmospheric opener “Caraven”, the band delivers the powerful “Cisterna”. In this track, the band makes use of their excellent guitar skills and massive drumming to achieve a very brutal sound, the growls are excellent but the screams get a bit annoying sometimes. The brutality continues with “Entheogen”, a track that could easily pass as Technical/Progressive Death Metal if it wasn’t for the very typical Deathcore structure.

After another atmospheric (read: filler) track with “Siphoning (A). The Task”, “(B) The Unmaker” delivers very catchy and interesting guitar wizardry, something we wish the band would have used more in this release. The riffing and the drumming go very nicely together and this track also features a very nice bass guitar line, this makes the song sound more like a jam-session experimental track (compared to the previous songs) and show that the band has the chops to make interesting music indeed.

“Pyschosomatic Disorder” delivers more of the same Deathcore, but it nicely closes down the album and has a few interesting elements here and there, this and the more melodic edge that the track has made it our favorite song of this album. In case you are in the market for some more Deathcore with a few interesting and promising elements, you should definitely buy “Manifest”. All the technical skills are there, it is just a matter of the band deciding to break away from the mold and start making unique music.

Release: Winter, 2011

Country: USA