Hearing Aide: After The Storm ‘Into A New Era’

With metal reigning from all across New York, our humble home has some great names under the NY banner when it comes to the death metal genre. From NYC and Yonkers, we have Immolation, Mortician, and Suffocation. In the bustling and rampaging gore infested Buffalo area the legendary Cannibal Corpse started to take shape. Yes, these bands are the best of the best when it comes to pure disemboweling  death metal in our own backyard!  With the torch still burning bright, another great band accepts the challenge to keep the nightmare alive. The band is known as After The Storm and they just released their latest EP, Into A New Era, and it’s time to once again show our local bands the support they need in this album review!

after the stormAfter The Storm is a studio project shaped by the hands of Matt Swistak and Pat McFeely. Both are very talented guitar players in their own right. Seeing how two great minds can create such a monstrous beast of a sonic attack, you will get lost in the music as much as I did! The album has such powerful influences drawn from many melodic death metal acts like Soilwork and Solution .45, to name a few inspiring groups. The track “The Awakening” goes for the kill right out of the gate. The finger work of both guitar players are displayed with such beauty and malice. It has the right amount of melody and sheer relentlessness power. For me it is hard to get into modern melodic death metal bands because they focus mostly on either more of the harmony driven riffs and forget about the more destructive fueled constructs. The boys although, have done a wonderful job balancing the two sides that make melodic death metal amazing. You see this in other tracks on the EP like “Rise as They Fall” and “Stand Unified.” These guys really know how to produce a great sound with perfect form!

My personal favorite track on this piece would be “A Great Sacrifice.” The overall tone of the track carries the overall vibe and atmosphere the album generates. Deep down I think the reason this track is my personal favorite is because of the call to arms and giving it up to achieve the goals in life we want to grasp in our hands. Such powerful lyricism and eagle-like soaring riffs, this cocktail of pure ingenious creativity cannot be denied by anyone who listens to this EP!

After The Storm has done us New Yorkers and metalheads proud with this amazing and perfectly executed piece of music that is Into A New Era. It gets a solid 5 out of 5 pentagrams from this metalhead! Go check the band’s Facebook now to follow their journey.

Key Tracks: A Great Sacrifice, The Awakening, Rise As They Fall

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