Review / 200 Words Or Less
Withdrawal
Faith, Flesh, And Blood

Withdrawal is possibly carrying metallic hardcore standards for all of Canada. As it becomes harder to note a truly interesting band of this style in general let alone from their corner of the world. The band managed to turn heads a couple years ago with their last EP Unknown Misery even managing to get rave reviews from this site. In the meantime the band toured and got signed by probably the foremost label for true metallic hardcore A389. This allowed the band further attention and a bit more time to perfect their songs and artwork.
What the listener gets out of the deal is a band with a stronger technical basis to their sound. The songs each build with tension and release. They are layered slight ambient gestures and couple them with some of the strongest riffing that they have managed to record. All of this gets bolstered by Adam's vocal and lyrical style which helps to paint a grim worldview and carry the distressed imagery of the record onto tape. Speaking of the art the cover containing a strong black and gray image helps to tie everything together in a somewhat classy way. The true surprises come in on side b (or songs 3 and 4 on the digital release). There the band gets to further toy with structures and song length. This creates a more metallic leaning sound that makes the songs more interesting overall and does much to leave their hardcore shackles behind.
As a note the record comes with a digital download which includes a fourth song that does not appear on the vinyl. This final song bring the breadth of the bands vision and lays it on the table. The song includes more metallic gestures than before and stretching the song length to 6 minutes allowing for new influences to be included. This manages to include the noise and sample based work of Give Up (aka Horders) which adds a new layer of thought and style to the bands work.