Six Reasons to Kill stormed into the underground back in 2000 with their Kiss the Demon debut album. At the time, the world was witnessing the rise of metalcore, not to mention a boom in the mathcore world, which promptly swallowed up the Germany-based group in the madness. Even today with deathcore being the in-thing, most wouldn’t know this band from the next latest group in the style. However, this mathcore and death metal hybrid continued on, eventually finding themselves working with Massacre Records for 2011’s Architects of Perfection and 2013’s We Are Ghosts, slowly carving a name for themselves that distanced them from the aforementioned styles. However, for 2016, the five-piece of ex-Stalemate and Gomorrha members (just to name a few) return to their roots of Bastardized Recordings to issue a new seven-inch vinyl titled Rote Erde. But is it one worth checking out, or is this two-track offering best left on the table?

Rote Erde has a fairly thick sounding modern production that pulls the enthusiasm to the forefront alongside the Swedish death buzz on the guitars and somewhat oppressive atmosphere, especially on its title track. “Rote Erde” bares the fangs of the group’s mathcore tendencies early on, building some catchy tension through use of solid grooves more on par with metalcore acts like Unearth or Caliban at times, all to reach some short-lived explosive and aggressive passages. Sadly, it only starts coasting with that enthusiasm and a solid guitar solo by the half-way point, leaving behind a bit of a jarring experience for the first ninety seconds, which is a huge departure from their cover of Dismember‘s “Of Fire”. While it would have been nice to hear the band do something unique with it, this homage is pretty spot on with the original, maintaining the same energy and melodic precision that made the source material so infectious in the first place.

Even though the Dismember cover is damn near spot on to the orignal, it’s the title track that just doesn’t quite cut it. It isn’t bad, but definitely far from one of the group’s better compositions, comparable to watching a vehicle revving up for an impromptu drag race that finds the engine dying at the starting line the moment the foot is taken off the brake. It’s nice to have something new from Six Reasons to Kill, and hopefully this is a sign we’ll have a follow-up soon. Let’s just hope it’s as solid a quality as the Dismember cover found here at the very least, as “Rote Erde” itself isn’t exactly that memorable a performance.

Digital review copy of this release provided by Bastardized Records
via ClawHammer PR.