Experimenting with specific genres for the first time can be a pretty scary and nerve racking experience. You could come across your new favorite band or you could listen to someone incredibly terrible and ruin your entire mood for a whole week; you just never know. Lucky for me, I took a risk and the outcome was something I was not expecting in the slightest and am genuinely happy about. Traitor, a band approximately two years old, refuses to stick with just one genre and instead has blended not just two, but three different styles together to give them such an edge over the typical and unoriginal bands in today’s scene. With several demos and some recorded tracks from a split they did with Bearfoot, Traitor doesn’t have too much to their name but with what they have so far it’s easy to tell that they’re on the verge of smashing a whole new path right into the mainstream scene. Traitor features ex-members of And Hell Followed With and Winterus, two extremely top notch bands in their respective genres.
Fusing the hardcore and metal sounds of bands like Converge, Rot In Hell, and Blackbreath with the straight up raw sound of Scandinavian black metal, Traitor is by no means a generic and typical band. I was skeptical at first as to whether or not I would even enjoy this EP because I have been known to not be a big fan of black metal, but the hardcore and metal aspect had my interests peeked so I couldn’t resist giving the new Shadowheart EP being released on Wolvesblood Records a couple spins. I was grossly misinformed as to how good this band is. Vocalist Nick Holland, who was also the vocalist of And Hell Followed With, absolutely demolishes everything on this EP. Oddly enough, Nick is one of my favorite vocalists aside from Jon Huber and I was extremely reluctant on how I was going to perceive him solely based on the fact that he was leaving one of my favorite deathcore bands for a hardcore and metal-infused black metal project.
I definitely judged a book by its cover when it came to this because the new EP is chock full of high black metal vocals mixed with the raw punk and hardcore sound when it comes down to it instrumentally. The band released a music video for the track “Lanterns” before I got a hold of the EP and I really did love how they gave each and every respective genre a chance to shine in each of their songs. In the middle of “Lanterns”, you got one of the strongest punk / hardcore moments in the whole EP. Approximately twenty minutes long it upset me that you really don’t get too much musically because one of the tracks was basically a “spoken interlude” which, don’t get me wrong, were extremely calming and strong lyrically but I feel like maybe they should have increased the songs lengths a tad more due to how short lengthwise the EP is. Regardless, there are four definite strong tracks that leave nothing to the imagination. Pure, raw black metal and some of the catchiest hardcore riffs and instrumentals I’ve heard in quite a long time. Traitor might have sparked a new found love for black metal in me just with this short EP all on its own. The five members of this band should definitely be proud of themselves for creating something so new and powerful, at least in my eyes. These Detroit natives might not be the most popular and talked about band in the scene as of right now but I guarantee within the next several months they’ll be a force to be reckoned with once everyone’s ears have had a little taste of this special treat.
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