|
Reviews
Rocksound
Magazine 8/10
It’s indisputable that modern technology
has radically altered the ways in which we discover new music.
However, with a whole wide world of aural delights at our fingertips,
we sometimes overlook what’s been right under our noses
the whole time. Bands like Shaped By Fate, for example. Having
never been the subject of any ‘next big thing’-style
hyperbole, the Cardiff-based five-piece have kept their heads
down and got on with it, playing countless shows across Britain
and Europe with the likes of The Chariot, Becoming The Archetype
and Raging Speedhorn, and releasing two promising EPs in the shape
of 04’s ‘The Fire In Which The Heart Resides’
(a split with countrymen Johnny Mental) and 05’s ‘Brightest
Lights Cast The Darkest Shadows’. Now six years into their
journey, the band’s debut full-length has certainly been
a long time coming. But that’s not such a bad thing. Whereas
some acts are willing to cut corners, rushing out a flashy yet
ultimately unfulfilling end product, Shaped By Fate have poured
their energies into creating something with a little more depth
and substance. Isis-like opener ‘Launch The Immortal Fleet’
is the first of many surprises, a soulful, hypnotic and strangely
beautiful number that draws you in with ease. In contrast, the
succeeding title track is as barbed and ugly as they come, conjuring
up visions of some unholy union between The Red Chord and ‘Until
Your Heart Stops’-era Cave In, with Paul Fortescue’s
larynx-shredding howls enough to kill a Paramore fan 12 times
over. Elsewhere, ‘They Told Me You Were Dead’ has
a touch of Brit metal contemporaries Architects about it, while
the teched-up guitar runs of ‘Deeper The Knife Slides’
display some serious Botch love. Forgive us for stating the blindingly
obvious here, but ‘The Unbeliever’ is not an easy
listen. With nearly every one of its 10 tracks clocking in at
over five minutes, it places serious demands on the listener’s
time and patience. Couple that with the music’s almost unwavering
brutality and you’ve got a record that’s intense to
the point of being exhausting. This is never more evident than
during the closing bars of ‘From Perfection To Poison’,
where a megatonic Acacia Strain-worthy breakdown creates the sensation
of being slowly pummelled into the ground. But amidst the carnage,
shining like a beacon of hope, lies instrumental centrepiece ‘My
Sun Sets To Rise Again’. Here taut, intertwining melodies,
fluid bass work and smart dynamic shifts show another side to
the band’s character, with former Eden Maine man Phil Buch
providing additional six-string texture. Rock Sound isn’t
going to make any baseless predictions that this record will catapult
Shaped By Fate to megastardom. Indeed, commercial considerations
seem to have been the last thing on their minds. The important
thing is that they’ve stuck to their guns and created something
they can be proud of. ‘The Unbeliever’ is bold, ambitious,
at times challenging, and so stupefyingly heavy you may just soil
yourself. Result!
Rock
Midget
It's been some considerable time coming, but at
long last arrives The Unbeliever, the debut full-length from South
Wales bruisers Shaped By Fate. Having first burst onto the British
scene a matter of mere months after their inception in late 2001,
thanks to a series of blistering live shows with the likes of
Everytime I Die, Bleeding Through and Walls Of Jericho, the five-piece
have gradually gone on to establish their reputation as being
one of the most hard working and explosive live acts anywhere
across the land. Despite the release of a handful of EP's that
have been lauded by critics and underground elitists alike, things
have since proved far from plain sailing for the band, with numerous
changes in personnel hampering their progress and stifling momentum.
But with a stable line up seemingly finally in place, The Unbeliever
could well signal the true arrival of Shaped By Fate. A sprawling
opus of brutal metalcore, with its colossal compositions frequently
soaring past the five-minute mark, The Unbeliever proves to be
more than worth the wait. 'Launch The Immortal Fleet' slowly uncoils
to reveal itself to be a grandiose slab of gloomy metal akin to
fellow Brits Red Stars Parade, while the album's title track ups
the ante even further with its intense riffs and twisted guitar
lines recalling hardcore standard bearers Botch. The Unbeliever
isn't a place for subtleties, with its no holds barred approach
repeatedly turning the listener black and blue, never better illustrated
than on the appropriately titled 'Of This One Apocalyptic Night'
which gloriously takes Until Your Heart Stops-era Cave In kicking
and screaming into the late 00's. Simply put, The Unbeliever is
a raging behemoth, the likes of which doesn't come around too
often. It's a long overdue battering ram of a release that should
help Shaped By Fate's crash past the self-imposed barricades of
the underground scene and on to international prominence.
BBC
Wales
The first quiet strummed chords of Launch The Immortal
Fleet give notice of the tsunami of sound approaching; it's clear
Shaped By Fate can't keep it low and understated for long. Sure
enough, dolmen-heavy riffs and grinding power chords surge through
the speakers and the first album in the new life of Cardiff's
Shaped By Fate gets going. New vocalist Paul fits flush into the
whole left by Ben and his striking bellow, rasping and nasty,
completes the prog-hardcore of the band. This is an intelligent
album, with elements of thrash, beatdown punk, hardcore and simple
rock combined in a fashion to avoid the lowest-common-denominator
pitfalls of the majority of metal. Sure, it's largely fast and
aggressive, but the complexity and dexterity shown on They Told
Me You Were Dead or Swarm Of Wolves elevate this record. The instrumental
My Sun Sets To Rise Again is the highpoint of the album. Its sharp,
taut and twisted instrumentation crashes through movements like
a metal Bohemian Rhapsody. There is, however, a tendency for some
of the tracks to blend together in textural terms, and it would
have been good to have slightly more variation through these 10
tracks. To a certain extent, however, that's a constraint of the
genre. The track titles too are a concession of sorts to the metal
stereotype - doom-mongering, apocalyptic keywords (swarm, knife,
destroyed, immortal etc) but then they go and title a track That
Thing Upstairs Is Not My Daughter, so thankfully it's not all
designed to woo the Games Workshop crowd. The Unbeliever is an
album for all your headbanging needs, but it's also definitely
an album for pure listening pleasure.
Room
Thirteen
UK metalcore has had a bad name of late, probably
as it all sounds the same with very few bands making an effort
and creating a new exciting breed of music. We've had the tight
jean and haircuts brigade sashaying around but their efforts have
very much been over-styling over substance. With US bands such
as Isis and The Black Dahlia Murder seemingly having a monopoly
on creative metalcore, it's time that the UK rise up with fists
in the air and show the world just what they can do.
Cardiff based, Shaped by Fate could be a sign of the tide turning.
Intensely driven and truly brutal in its delivery, The Unbeliever
is a positive testament to the creativity of UK bands against
a torrent of mediocre and lets face it, derivative bands. Signed
to In At The Deep End Records, a label which has brought us Send
More Paramedics, Gallows and Sylosis, the label has an amazing
and enviable ear for great bands. With the kudos gained from being
on such a prestigious label, it only seems to be a matter of time
before more people hop on the Shaped by Fate bandwagon and rightly
so.
Throat ripping vocals and intricate yet vicious guitar work are
part and parcel of The Unbeliever. 'Launch The Immortal Fleet'
literally launches you headfirst into the album with gusto, immediately
throwing you about in the maelstrom of brooding guitars and crashing
drums and without delay making a segue way into the album's title
track. The palpable rage in singer Paul Fortescue's voice unwavering
as he sings "These are the pale deaths which men miscall
their lives/Bodies jerk like puppets corpses and hell walks laughing".
This is fantastically brutal fare.
'From Perfection To Poison' continues the vein of brutal sounds.
On full on attack, attack, attack mode it never wavers and at
over six minutes it is like some kind of metalcore odyssey and
that isn't a bad thing. When Fortescue rages "Take the strain,
and battle 'til end" you believe every word. This is clever
thoughtful metal which is not a thrown together effort; there
is a great deal of depth here.
This is what the UK hardcore scene needs; searing, intense sounding
music with real passion at its bloody heart. This is music to
stand next to the Everytime I Die's and Throwdown's of this world;
this is a band to be proud of, not just for Cardiff, but the whole
of the UK.
Montagpress
Following the departure of dreadlocked, ginger
frontman Ben Duffin-Jones from Shaped By Fate, there was a collective
sigh from anyone who’d even stumbled across one of the band’s
incendiary live shows. If they expected ‘The Unbeliever’
to even see the light of day, they were being disgustingly optimistic,
and if anyone on top of that expected ‘The Unbeliever’
to be any good they were lying. Yet as if living out their own
moniker, Cardiff’s finest metalcore powerhouse haven’t
merely survived the changes that have rocked their little world
since the delivery of the brutal ‘Brightest Lights Cast
The Darkest Shadows’ EP, they’ve grown around them,
evolved and bettered themselves. Operating outside of hardcore
might perhaps have been anathema to an earlier incarnation of
the band, but not this one, armed with cover art from Jimbob of
Welsh sludge rockers Taint, guitar courtesy of Phil from the late,
not-that-great Eden Maine and most impressively, sonically crushing
drones by Chris Fielding of Northern doomsters Agent Of The Morai,
every move seems calculated to offend the more reactionary elements
of their fanbase. This is only technically their debut but it
feels as though Shaped By Fate have been around forever and ‘The
Unbeliever’ emerges triumphantly from their collective experience
to revel in an immense, calculated Integrity-style chug buffeted
with discordant noise and savage, pit-filling breakdowns. With
a sound that wouldn’t seem at all out of place on Deathwish
Inc, ‘The Unbeliever’ cries out for some Jake Bannon
coverart and, of course, your utter, unwavering adoration.
New
Noise
Shaped By Fate are all about trials and tribulations.
Since forming in 2001 the Cardiff quintet have gone through several
record deals, tough UK tours and enough turbulent member changes
to kill any ordinary group. The hard times have never totally
threatened to do them in- three EPs, piles of positive press and
taking to European roads with likes of Parkway Drive and The Chariot
are not the achievements of men without bottle- but losing both
a lead singer and a drummer on the eve of recording your first
full-length is going to set any band back a bit.
It’s not like Ben Duffin-Jones was an easy dude to replace
either. Anyone who ever saw the singer howl and kick and throw
himself at venue barriers countrywide will attest to what a magnetic
and dangerous yet good-natured and amiable frontman he was. And
when he left almost a year ago to pursue a medical career, the
men behind him sort of… stopped. SBF spent so long in limbo
in fact, they probably wouldn’t blame you for forgetting
their name. No one really thought they would return.
All that underestimation and frustration though has formed, like
a fibrous cyst, into ‘The Unbeliever’. And, in short,
Shaped By Fate’s first full length has been worth the wait.
An hour of steaming, violent rage, this thing pummels, thrashes
and booms in equal deadly doses, echoing hardcore figureheads
like Botch, Converge and Strife as much as it valiantly picks
up the flaming torch that got UK talent like Eden Maine and Beecher
so badly burned.
Yeah, that’s right, this is a band in the best form of their
short history but the big time isn’t going to come calling
anytime soon. ‘The Unbeliever’ isn’t an easily-digested
record and really the unintelligible rage of brilliantly able
new frontman Paul Fortesque (SBF apparently have a thing for faintly
posh names), the literary and clever lyrics he barks and the raucous
and challenging output of the musicians behind him make it unlikely
the band will ever trouble the UK’s bigger venues.
However, with a flawless track record for frighteningly good live
shows, new music with brains and brawn to play, the same powerful
resilience and finally a stable line up, Shaped By Fate are ready
to set standards, break barriers and convert people one toilet
venue at a time.
You go ahead, remember their name this time, maybe even let them
become your favourite UK band, they really are that good. Just
don’t let Shaped By Fate lend you any good luck charms.
DieShellsuitDie
I think it’s fair to say that Shaped By Fate
are unflushables. Fads have been and went, bands have come and
gone but Shaped By Fate are still floating defiantly at the top
of the water and it’s fair to say for the 5-6 years the
general consensus on the UK metal/hardcore scene is that their
shit don’t stink.
So, after 5-6 years of establishing themselves in the scene, SBF
have finally plopped out their first full length entitled “The
Unbeliever” and it absolutely rips. After the slightly pointless,
epic beginning to the album in the form of “Launch The Immortal
Fleet” you are hit head on with unrelenting riffage and
some absolutely killer breakdowns. I can’t stress to you
enough how many riffs this band shit out throughout the album,
one brutal riff after another ripping through you ears like a
train through an average human being. Every song is hit with floor
punchtastic beatdown at some point that will no doubt leave some
bloody noses at SBF shows all around the UK.
There were only 3 things I wasn’t too keen on. Firstly,
the first track that I mentioned early. Secondly, the vocals really
lack the power that the rest of the band have and sometimes appear
as an annoying distraction from the superb riffage taking place.
Although he did remind me a bit of the Misery Signals vocalist.
Finally there were a few too many beatdown - pause - beatdown
but slower bits for my liking.
Despite those things, this is honestly a fucking brilliant album
if you like you metal fast paced, intelligent and face meltingly
brutal. Get your camo cut offs ready…believe.
|
