Shipwreck A.D.

Abyss

[3.5/5]

Shipwreck A.D.’s Abyss is an extraordinary case of a metallic hardcore band channeling acts like Integrity and Cro-Mags while maintaining some actual integrity and foregoing the Cro-Magnon attitudes. Through brute strength, pounding rhythms and a purely ugly, menacing recording, Abyss follows its narrator’s literal course from the bottom of the ocean (“Squall”) to the top of a mountain (“Zenith”). Concepts this ambitious are rare enough in Shipwreck’s field; their poetic nature is even rarer, though (“Anyone can kill a field of flowers/But who can sit and just watch one grow?”). Highlighted by the dynamic “Beached,” the angry epiphany of the 108-esque “Lotus” and the penultimate point of the journey in “Ascent,” Abyss is an accomplished debut that fits the Deathwish Inc. mold, yet breaks from the unimaginative shell with which the band’s peers have wrapped themselves. (DEATHWISH INC) Brian Shultz