EVERY ENEMY ALIVE – WAR WITHIN

A roar of twin guitars greets us into Thief, which subsequently takes off into an energised banger that is defined by potently impressionably lyrics that, based on your truly’s past experiences, perfectly embody that horrible sense of overwhelming panic and anxiety. The fire carries on high through into Don’t Start A Revolution, aggressively through both the performances and the words taking aim at people who claim to be rebellious when in reality they contribute little to the fight, instead actually feeding into the corruptive system holding us down.

Seth Bartholdi steps up to the mic and makes his brash presence efficiently felt in the smashing Stories Of The Damned, An Amorous Affliction opens on an atmospheric note before returning to the familiarly resolute setting, plus it’s highlighted by a great chorus, and the climatic, emotionally-riding Midnight Tragedy conveys a lot of sorrow and helplessness in how people can so easily fall apart from each other and spin out into a forsaken spiral as a result.

This is a truly staggering debut EP right here from the Vermont metalcore squad, who do such a stupendous job tackling and emphasising a variety of mental health and social issues tearing us apart inside and out, and the record more or less serves as the quintessential vessel for anybody who can relate to battling with these particular struggles to simply vent it all, aware that somebody else out there – Every Enemy Alive, in this case – understands what you’re suffering through.