Metalheads love thrash and hate metalcore, this seems to be universally accepted. Say you meet two dudes at a Deicide show and ask them what their favorite bands are. If Guy A says Kreator and Guy B says As I Lay Dying, a vast majority of metal's lifers will immediately claim Guy B to be a poser unworthy of disgracing metal with his mere presence. Thrash, despite owing a large credit of its existence to hardcore punk, is considered one of the purest forms of extreme metal. It embodies the aggression, the abrasiveness, the anger, the swagger, everything that makes metal ballsy and skull crushing. Metalcore, probably because of its ties to hardcore, is considered everything that is wrong with popular metal. It is overtly simple, unoriginal, bland, and manufactured. The trees may not represent the forest, but the biggest names are indeed usually rather boring and unafraid of recycling the same Gothenburg melodeath melodies over and over again over simple and predictable breakdowns underneath bad screaming and occasional whining. With this in mind, Fehdja decided to try to mix the two styles, with less than successful results.
France's Fedhja really goes out of their way to remind you that they are indeed "thrashcore", putting it in their logo, mentioning it in every interview and promo blurb, and just parroting the word endlessly in some attempt to make them stand out. The style shouldn't be hard to pull off, and it can be argued that thrashcore is interchangeable with crossover as it is. If that was the case, why not just label oneself crossover and join an already popular crowd? The answer is because they aren't blending thrash with hardcore punk like Cross Examination or Municipal Waste does nowadays, but more because they are mixing thrash with As I Lay Dying and Bury Your Dead. And the result sounds like... well, As I Lay Dying and Bury Your Dead. Don't get me wrong, there are indeed some healthy thrash segments present in each song (namely "Insoumis"), but they're interspersed with metalcore yelling, aggressive melodeath riffing, and breakdowns. Really all this is is typical AILD fare with faster breakdowns and the occasional Slayer riff. Sadly, there really isn't much else to say. This is a bland record and not even worth listening to all the way since all of the tracks are so damn indistinguishable. Go ahead and listen to the first track, but after that there's no real reason to go further, you already know what the rest of the album sounds like. Maybe some hardcore and metalcore fans with gauged earlobes and lip piercings will love the hell out of this, but as a more traditionally leaning metal fan, I can't say I'm gonna listen to this ever again after this review. Artas does this kind of thing better (though not much better).
RATING - 30%
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