Rock Planet

Maybe it's not the case to be too purist in this field, but for sure if a band deserves the adjective of "true metalcore", this band is that of Left To Vanish. True not in the sense they're among the prime movers – they were born when the wave was already moving! – but in the sense they play this music in the same way of the prime movers.

We're talking of Zao and Arkangel, two bands which intended metalcore in a rawer and more personal way than the various In Flames-wannabe that we find on our shoulders (even if Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall cannot be considered some wagon jumpers), and to whom the five guys from Philadelphia refer to.

The band moves following the dualism new school hardcore/death metal, in the riffing – always heavy and square, with brutal distortions of high tonnage and faraway melodic intrusions from an easy catchiness – and in the vocal scores – at times clean, at times growl, but mostly in the shape of an agonizing screaming of Carcass school – with several intrusions into some other more or less various fields (from the more melodic emocore to the “post” school to stoner music).

It's not a case if metalcore found its fortune through different paths, which are more eighties influenced or more melodic and emo, with the consequence that Left To Vanish – that do nothing to deny their belonging to the metalcore breed – are so faraway from the reference genre. Or, better saying, from its most popular form.