The Slow Start Is a Setup
I queued this up off my own Friday Five expecting an opaque progressive death metal record, and that is not what Loneshore made. There is way more doom in here than I bargained for, the vocals push toward black metal, and the whole thing has an organic feel I wasn’t ready for. Different than I expected, and I’m not mad about it.
Loneshore are a five-piece out of Rio de Janeiro, and Nothing Left to Deconstruct is their second album, their first for Willowtip after a 2018 debut. Let’s get the production out of the way first, because it’s the first thing I noticed: the drums actually sound like drums. No triggers, no plastic. There’s deep bass running through the whole record, and it leans more post-metal than the prog-death I was bracing for.
It starts slow. “Self Oscillations” has an almost trance-like quality that pulls you into their world, but it takes its time getting there. “Straylight” is where it snaps awake, chuggy and tight with surprisingly harsh vocals after that soft open. It’s a very different song, and the contrast is the point. By “To Stride the Black Earth” I was hooked, which is exactly what got me excited about this band last week: a great riff keeps things chugging, a snake-like lead guitar reminiscent of Opeth winds through the atmospherics, and you spend the whole song wondering what comes next.
“Birth of a Mountain” is the one. It opens with an almost Mastodon-esque feel, folds into familiar Loneshore territory with a prominent lead and more sneaky atmospherics, and then midway it pulls off a change of pace that speeds everything up dramatically, drums matching every step. The track keeps pulling you in and pushing you back out, and honestly I wasn’t sure I was digging it until it ended. It’s my favorite song on the record. “Straylight” is right behind it.
The closer, “With Nothing We Part,” is an absolute beast. It’s big, it’s winding, it’s got great harsh and clean vocals, and it leaves you wanting more. It’s everything you want to end an epic album on.
If I’m being honest, I was hoping for a little more based on the single, and parts of this bored me more than I’d like to admit. It’s great background-listening metal that rewards you when you actually lean in. It starts a little slow, but it builds into something very cool and unique in a crowded metal world.
Score: 7.3/10