Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Whitechapel - A New Era of Corruption (2010)

Following my enjoyment of the Suicide Silence feature release last month I was intrigued to see if I was about to go on a deathcore streak with the arrival of Whitechapel in The Revolution hot seat this month.  After 3 or 4 listens I remain distinctly underwhelmed in comparison to the more immediate entertainment I found with The Black Crown.  First off the bat though, it is important to say I do not hate A New Era of Corruption.  It lacks any real depth or grit overall for me though.  Despite some interesting breakdowns that allow for the vocals to play just a big a part as the guitars I find them still to be nothing more than a welcome distraction to what I deem to be otherwise quite a monotonous record.

There is an almost mechanical (sadly lacking the "necro" aspect promised by the penultimate track) undertone to this album for me, a real sense of going through the motions.  Punctuated only by the all too brief moments of true death metal guttural gurns and the hint of groove to a riff every now and again, this machine-like edge to proceedings soon becomes all I am focusing on.  Album closer Single File to Dehumanization is the least enjoyable of all the eleven tracks on offer here and is perhaps the best example of the challenges I have with this record.  The added frustration is that it sounds like these guys are better than this record actually shows them to be and that they somehow along the way lost any sense of soul or even fun in what they were doing and fired out a technically proficient yet ultimately boring album.