Sentinel - Demo (2010)

It’s been out a few months now, but it’s certainly worth a mention. By far one of the best, highest quality demo records I’ve ever heard: If I didn’t tell you they were unsigned, you almost certainly wouldn’t have guessed it (unless you know them already, obviously).

If you like The Contortionist, and the stuff on the new Djent scene, the chances are you’ll probably like this, too. The guitar tone isn’t anything like as djenty as the likes of Periphery, but the feel of the record isn’t that dissimilar from the djent world. Certainly it sits in the segment of ‘Progressive Deathcore’ of which ‘progressive’ is the key word.

It’s certainly Deathcore though: There is no shortage of breakdowns. In fact, ‘Spire of Humanity’ fits perfectly into the bracket of 1-minute-40-ish instrumental breakdown intros or interludes (Grave Danger by Broadcast the Nightmare; Transcend by Elitist; Introlude by Red I Flight to name but a few other examples). The breaks don’t tend to have quite the technicality of Sumeriancore or the relentless intensity of Brutal Deathcore, but that certainly doesn’t make them bad.

All the members of the band clearly know what they’re doing. There’s some nice drum fills, and confident lead guitars. At some points the vocals do sound a little weak, but I put that down to the lack of after-production that goes into most signed artist’s records. The music itself isn’t exactly simple: They have transitions from heavier to softer parts within the songs and they don’t always play on monotonous time signatures, and it’s all done well, so more kudos have to be given there.

I think they have a very realistic chance of following in the footsteps of The Contortionist in making an album so exceptional that they won’t even need to sell their souls to a huge corporate label to flog their albums for them. Keep your ears peeled for anything new coming out of these guys in the near future!

7/10

STREAM IT HERE

1. Channels
2. Spire of Humanity
3. To Shape An Ocean
4. Universe