‘Stick To Your Guns’ hailing from Orange County California play a mix of Metalcore and Hardcore along with some melodic elements. Comes from the Heart is an intense slab of riffs and dynamic vocals. The whole motto in this album is a passion rooted in living life to the fullest and playing and creating music that gets them excited so they can impart that energy to their fans.
The album starts off with ‘What separates the heart from the heartless’, which is a very Hatebreed-ish song and perfect to mosh to. Towards the end of the track there is a slight element of Rapcore as the breakdown begins, all in all a pretty simple track. Then we come to the second track ‘Impact’ which is more metal than Punk with traces of Metalcore and a little bit of djent(??), all mixed perfectly bringing out something new. One of the strengths of both of these tracks is the gang shouts that are really quite impactful.
The fourth track on this album ‘Enougn is enough’, brings in much more of the melodic element of the album and leaves the metal side to quite an extent , but still retains the hardcore element thus making this track a mix of August Burns Red and Hatebreed.
The next track ‘Accessory children’ starts off with a riff that sounds very similar to Pantera’s ‘Slaughtered’ but later turns into a breakdown driven style of Metalcore similar to Gojira. Later into the song they bring in their melodic elements as well with some great clean singing.
Track six ‘Interlude’ is a quite a change, and at this point the band rests easy on the heavier stuff and gives us a light instrumental post rock-ish track which provides some breathing space to the album. But then the next song ‘Tonights entertainment’ brings back the heaviness with some Groove metal along with a little bit of Meshuggah influenced riffage.
The next track ‘We must look like ants from up there’, is pure hardcore without a hint of metal and well… that’s pretty much I can say about the track.
Same is the case for ‘Driving Force’. The last track ‘Looking for surface’ is probably the perfect closure which brings in all the elements we heard in their music for one last time.
Sticks To Your Guns haven’t brought anything new to the table with this sophomore album. This sounds too much like other new age hardcore albums. Every song starts out with a running double bass, crazy guitar riff, gang vocals, breakdown and then finishes it out with the same hardcore sound you’re used to hearing!! Even though this is nothing new, if you’re a big fan of the genre, you’re sure to love every song on this album.
Review by: Nishant Saxena & Kabeer