BESOMORA - Devotion to the Fear

Upcoming self-released EP Devotion to the Fear is a modernisation job, but a selective one. The drums are handled by To The Grave's Matt Clarke, an engineer who cut his teeth in deathcore and metalcore, and he brings that vocabulary with him rather than leaving it at the door. The kick has weight behind it, the snare sits thick instead of snapping thin, and the low-end underneath it all is warm, more felt than heard. It's a modern heavy-music drum sound grafted onto a melodeath frame, and it works because nothing above it has to compete for the same space. The bass carries a lot of that modern warmth too, chunky rather than scooped, filling out the low end in a way that a leaner mix would leave empty.

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The guitars stretch into 9-string range on "Imminent Lies," and it's the rhythm end that absorbs the weight, not the lead vocabulary. The riffs get heavier. The soloing stays melodeath through and through. Producer Mike Trubetskov shapes the whole thing into something that sounds like now, not 2003.

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Other than some chunky sections as mentioned above, the songwriting is largely unchanged, and the riffs are still pure-blooded Gothenburg. The vocals are treated similarly. Vocalist and guitarist Vlad Martynov is powerful, aggressive and articulate, but there wasn't any need for reinvention, no need to change the delivery to match the drums. Besomora haven't rebuilt themselves around a new sound. They built a new sound around the band they already were.

It's also why the guest slots don't feel like a favour. Per Nilsson (Scar Symmetry, ex-Meshuggah) and Chris Broderick (In Flames, ex-Megadeth) both contribute lead guitar sections to this record: Per on "Imminent Lies," and Chris on album closer "Leave Me Alone." In a lot of hands that pairing reads as a crutch, two bigger names holding up a band still finding its footing, but here it doesn't, because by the time either guitarist arrives, the songwriting's already done its own convincing. The leads are an addition to something whole, not a patch over something missing.

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Worth sitting with too: this is a self-released EP. No label picked up the phone and made these features happen. Broderick and Nilsson turned up for an independent Sydney band because the songwriting was good enough to make it worth their time, which is a different kind of endorsement than one brokered through a shared roster.

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Not every band knows the difference between adding weight and losing themselves. Two EPs in, and Besomora already do. Looking forward to the full length.