![News Added Aug 25, 2016 Sometimes it’s almost impossible not to look back on the past and ask ‘what if?’ As in ‘what if I’d actually taken those piano lessons in middle school and learned to play an instrument?’ or ‘what if I’d actually talked to that cute girl in my sophomore English class and […]](https://hasitleaked.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/unnamed-19-320x320.jpg "Awaiting Downfall : Distant Call")
Sometimes it’s almost impossible not to look back on the past and ask ‘what if?’ As in ‘what if I’d actually taken those piano lessons in middle school and learned to play an instrument?’ or ‘what if I’d actually talked to that cute girl in my sophomore English class and didn’t end up as a single guy in my mid-twenties eating Chinese takeout on my couch while wearing a faded Morbid Angel shirt with the sleeves cut off?’ With debut Distant Call, German thrashy metalcore quartet Awaiting Downfall aim to answer their own versions of this question: what if Trivium didn’t go full Metallicore with The Crusade and instead tried to remake Ember to Inferno? What if Shadows Fall wrote music people actually cared about after Threads of Life? What if more ’00s metalcore bands drew inspiration from thrash instead of burying us up to our necks in harmonic minor riffs culled from 90s Gothenburg? The result is slick, catchy, and inspired – but not without flaws.
Essentially, Distant Call is the sound of a band who loved the shit out of Ember to Inferno and tried to make their own version of it. All the tropes from Trivium‘s debut are here: crunchy melodic metalcore riffs spiritually indebted to the Big 4 of thrash, alternating clean/harsh vocals, and whirling skyrocket solos courtesy of guitarist Maximillian Gockel. There’s also the unintelligibly deep spoken-word bridges, prolonged acoustic intros, and screams that occasionally repeat the lyrics of the clean vocals. Hell, even Downfall‘s sense of melody is similar: after some ripping Bay Area chugs, early highlight “From Martyr to Murderer” hits with an ascending, hold-nothing-back chorus that immediately calls to mind Heafy & friends. Ditto for the bobbing mid-paced verse and cleanly sung refrain of “To Disinfect the World’s Wounds.”
