AVERSIONS CROWN

Despite returning to an increasingly crowded and diverse deathcore marketplace, AVERSIONS CROWN still sound determined to crush everything in their path. Although routinely overshadowed by lesser bands, the Australians' distinctive take on a well-worn formula has provided this metallic substrain with some of its most murderous moments over the last decade. Like fellow countrymen THY ART IS MURDER, the Brisbane quartet have far more old-school death metal lurking in their musical DNA than first impressions might suggest, but it's their nurturing of deathcore's dramatic instincts and subversive potential that ensures that "Hell Will Come For Us All" is another patently superior piece of work.

If you like to listen to metal that exerts bruising physicality, few are able to surpass the levels of state-of-the-art brute force that AVERSIONS CROWN routinely wield here, but there's melodic depth and a thousand subtle touches bringing substance to the style, too.

When you're this adept at refining and redefining your chosen genre, there is no real need to indulge in radical departures. Instead, "Hell Will Come For Us All" feels like another cautious evolutionary leap, with a greater use of symphonic and ambient texture and even a few discernible melodies slithering through splits in the near-remorseless ferocity.

From savage opener "The Soil" to the more dynamic, atmospheric onslaughts of "Hymn Of Annihilation" and "Sorrow Never Sleeps", these are shrewdly structured songs with beginnings, middles and ends, all contributing to form a 40-minute whole with emotional highs and lows and a real sense of momentum and purpose. Ironically, the greatest moment is when AVERSIONS CROWN spurn the brakes and go full pelt for "Scourge Of Violence", one of the most unashamedly ripping, violent and weird death metal songs you'll hear this year. New vocalist Tyler Miller earns multiple credits, stripes and rosettes for the barbarous bellowing at the song's slow-motion mid-point alone.

For those that have followed AVERSIONS CROWN to this point, "Hell Will Come For Us All" should feel like some kind of vindication. Here is a band that have stuck to their guns and allowed evolution to take its course, culminating in their finest album to date and one of this year's most complete and satisfying missives from the deathcore realm. Subtle progress is still progress, after all.