The Road of Awareness 2011

"On "The Road of Awareness", Portuguese metallers We Are Killing Ourselves (or WAKO, if you're down with it) teach us a lesson in how to wrap rage and aggression in sophistication. The core style is modern thrash metal, which means aggressive riffage and a good dose of brutality as well, but also some crushingly heavy grooves. Also drawing on other modern metal styles such as deathcore and melodic death metal, WAKO implement both blastbeats and breakdowns, as well as growls, yells, and clean vocals into the tunes on this album, and this combination works quite well, as many of the breakdowns strike me as more imaginative and innovative than what you often hear in run-of-the-mill deathcore. Moreover, WAKO inject a dose of djent into their music, and amidst the groove, aggression and breakdowns, you find bursts of progressive and technical elements such as odd time signature, complex riffage, and and quirky guitar figures, and there is also some pretty complex drumming every now and then. On the whole, "The Road of Awareness" is a very enjoyable modern thrash metal album which has enough twists and turns to keep the listener interested, and should definitely appeal to fans of Lamb Of God, Shadows Fall, God Forbid, Meshuggah, Memorial, Sacrificial and the like. (review originally posted at seaoftranquility.org)"