7

Generic, but shows some signs

As far as scenes within the Heavy community are concerned, Hardcore and Metalcore are having a right time of it at the moment. The spectrum within the scene is so far apart between bands who are truly excellent and bands who are truly awesome, whenever a new bands releases an album or EP it either pales in comparison to something or shines a new light. Glass Harbour hail from the North East, and with this EP, frankly we’re pretty undecided. It’s probably going to take them releasing a full album before you can really place them somewhere on the spectrum, but let’s be honest the sheer fact that we’re looking ahead and anticipating new music from this lot means this EP has pretty much done its job in at least piquing our interest.

Containing five tracks, Distance From Departure has it’s real highs, but wow are there some lows as well. It’s an EP so can be forgiven, but the production across each track is shoddy to the point it sounds like the vocals and the music are not actually meant to be together, sounding at times like one of those awful ‘Vocals Cover’ videos on Youtube. The vocals themselves need a bit of a rethink. They’re similar to those really desperate screams Loz performs for While She Sleeps, but overdone - the front man definitely needs to be mixing it up a bit. Musically the band sound tight, with some of the better moments shining through on tracks like Homegrounds and Black with some of the riffs excellent. But again, it all does sound a bit generic. They’re clearly a talented bunch, but they need to do better in directing that talent into a more controlled sounding level of music. Screaming desperately over chugging riffs can only get you so far and they’ll need to step it up in future.