WHITECHAPEL Mark Of The Blade LP (2016)

Knoxville, Tennessee's Whitechapel have always been the deathcore band that deathcore purists and metal snobs alike grudgingly respect, and Mark of the Blade is the record where they started pushing the edges of what the genre could hold. There's clean vocals here. There's atmosphere. There's still Phil Bozeman sounding like he's gargling gravel in a tornado. It works.

Released in 2016, Mark of the Blade drew the predictable "they've gone soft" discourse while simultaneously being one of the most interesting things in the deathcore space that year. The guitar work from Ben Savage is expansive without losing the low-end brutality the band built their name on, and the production gives every breakdown the weight it deserves. If your entry point was This Is Exile or A New Era of Corruption and you skipped this one, you owe yourself a revisit.

Single LP. US deathcore. 2016 full-length on vinyl.

Fans of: Thy Art Is Murder, Carnifex, Chelsea Grin, Suicide Silence, Oceano, All Shall Perish, Despised Icon.