Artist: Everything Went Black
Album: Cycles of Light
Genre: Hardcore
Label: Deathwish

Intro tracks are a tricky little thing, they kick off the entire album, like the first line to a book; it can either hook you for good, or ruin everything immediately. A well done intro can make an album unforgettable, Coheed & Cambria and A.F.I. have always been very good at this, they manage to set the tone for the entire album flawlessly, and make a truly epic and interesting track out of essentially nothing. But most bands aren’t quite that creative, the introduction track to Anberlin’s Cities for example, is as far as I can tell just a minute and a half of some noise, with a few random cityscape sounds sampled in, and then it just sorta stops, and goes into the actual album. According to my iTunes, I’ve never actually listened to that track, always skipping ahead to the actual content of the album, until just now, when I figured I should probably verify that it was indeed just nonsense. So despite the fantastic intro track off of Everything Went Black’s new album, Cycles Of Light, I tried my best to remain impartial until the album progressed a bit, just to make sure it wasn’t just a brilliant bit of production work, at a quality level that simply couldn’t be matched by the band. Though I was fairly certain that was not the case.

It wasn’t easy to not be instantly sold on this album, mind you, “XI” kicked the album off with an endlessly dark and gritty soundscape that built a catastrophic level of tension that promised to break with appropriate devastation. The fact that this track had a feel, and level of outright despair that reminded me of the beginning of Converge’s You Fail Me didn’t hurt things, either. In fact, as the album progressed, it was impossible to ignore the influence from bands like Converge; that very dark, chaotic, and even sometimes atmospheric style of hardcore, which is of course, a very intricate and polarizing style, one that really isn’t very easy to pull off, but Everything Went Black execute it beautifully, if such a word is appropriate. Everything about this album is about a perfect harmonization of complete opposites, from the vast tempo changes, to the lead lines layered over the pounding rhythm section, everything seems like it shouldn’t quite work when pieced together, but in reality, the match up couldn’t be more perfect. This album isn’t just a fancy intro track followed by filler, “XI” is only mere sample of what Everything Went Black had in store for Cycles Of Light; the prelude to a brilliant dark hardcore album that showed amazing promise from the get go, and never let up.

So it seems as though Everything Went Black pulled through the dreaded intro track, and delivered and album that really lived up to the pressure that track built up to. I have to say, I thought that was going to be nearly impossible to pull off, but it really did set the stage for the rest of the album, power, exceedingly dark, and nothing short of epic, a perfect blend of gritty hardcore and fascinatingly gorgeous yet dissonant atmospheric leads. Cycles Of Light displays the entire musical spectrum, using extremely polarizing tones that somehow work just perfectly together; a vast dynamic range, all while staying true to their hardcore sound. I have to say, I’m not really quite sure how bands can come up with this sort of thing, but I sure am glad they can.

SCORE: 9/10
Reviewed by: Mike Hogan

• Author
• Recent Posts

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.

Latest posts by James Shotwell (see all)

• 2015’s Most Underrated Films - December 29, 2015
• Passing The Torch: The End Of An Era For UTG - December 1, 2015
• UTG PREMIERE: Before The Streetlights – “Private Browser” - November 26, 2015