Band : Forget To Forgive
Album title : A Product Of Dissecting Minds
Label : GSR Music
Distributor : Suburban
Release date : 26/02/2010
Release : CD

In Holland the Deathcore genre has become a rather popular sub-genre amonst the youngsters, and relatively fresh (they started only some 4 years ago) South Holland (they’re from Heerlen and Landgraaf, the latter home to the Pinkpop festival) quartet (consisting of singer Ash Hoex, guitarist Tomm Hoesen, bassist/ singer Davy Smeers and drummer Edwin Sts. In spite of their rather short career, the guys have already played in venues throughout Europe and shared stages with the likes of (in alphabetical order, but the list is incomplete) Across Five Aprils (USA), Born From Pain (Holland), Bury Tomorrow (UK), Heyser (France), Horse The Band (USA), Kickback (France), My Autumn (Russia), MyChildren MyBride (USA), Salt The Wound (USA), and War From A Harlots Mouth (Germany). In early June of last year, the band announced they had signed to GSR Records, and set about recording their debut full-length album with Stefan van Neerven (Born From Pain guitarist) as recording engineer and producer.

Stylistically, FTF combines Death vocals with mid-tempo Technical and Progressive Death guitar (down-tuned, for sure?) which frequently goes into real slow and darn-heavy Hardcore breakdowns. The end result is a super-heavy juggernaut sound, and thanks to the bassist bringing occasionally counterpointing vocals to the lead singer in another style of singing, the band ensures a certain diversity in their material. Surprising moments are the acoustic guitar ending of “New York?”, and clean vocal passages in both “Fake Mask” and “Eruption”, making for a temporary (Scr)Emo touch! But overall, the album is primarily lead-heavy!

At myspace.com/forgettoforgive, you can listen to 3 tracks off the album, including the aforementioned “Eruption”. In spite of being signed to the influencial GSR, the guys apparently still take of their booking themselves, meaning that for the time being you’ll be able to see the quartet play in Holland occasionally. However, if you’re from the Kempen area, you might wanna check the band out at the Leverage Of Chaos Summer Edition festival at Zaal Ter Horst in Lommel on July 10. Say…that’s summer, so maybe you’ll simply attend that event as part of your many festival outings, eh? Other bands on the bill include Texas in June (USA), WBTBWB (Germany), and Campus (Belgium)! Being a fan of all things “out-of-the-ordinary”, I cannot help liking…nay, lóving this album…and it’s with a certain heart-sore that I take my leave from the album, because what with the workload I have at this moment (that same workload preventing me from being able to listen to the album as much as I would like, and appreciating it even more than evident from my rating), I don’t think I’ll be able to return to it very soon!.

92/100

Tony.