Artist: Call To Preserve
Album: Validation
Genre: Hardcore
Label: Facedown

As a general rule of thumb, four song EPs that are only ten minutes in length are typically pretty uneventful, especially if you’re a hardcore band (if you’re Wolves In The Throne Room or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, four songs is a much different story). Call To Preserve somehow have accomplished to make their four song EP interesting.

Each song on Validation can have its own set of descriptions applied to it, as each song fits into a different and fairly specific style of hardcore. “Exploit, Neglect, Condem” is a mid-tempo slam hardcore song, “Validation” is a lot more akin to melodic hardcore (but you’ll not hear any clean singing here), “Closer” is built for pure moshing, and “To Become One” (coincidentally) brings the whole package together.

As an EP, Validation does everything you could hope for it to do: gives a solid glimpse into what a band has in its arsenal while providing a killer track or two–but not giving up everything the band has that’s worthwhile (a mistake In Flames made with their Mirror’s Truth EP). Assuming this EP becomes a trend, the music world should be on the lookout for Call To Preserve with their next full-length.

SCORE: 8/10
Review written by: Jordan Munson

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James Shotwell

James Shotwell is the founder of Under The Gun Review. He loves writing about music and movies almost as much as he loves his two fat cats. He's also the co-founder of Antique Records and the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. You should probably follow him on Twitter.

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