Ecocide - When Will It End?

Sadly the answer to Ecocide’s question found within this album title is now. The Texan crust troupe has already called it a day before the release of this new LP through Tofu Carnage Records. The record is certainly a way to out with a bang though and as far as this brand of atmospheric crust, with tints of post metal goes, When Will It End? could be one of the finest in 2013 as a standard bearer. With the likes of Downfall of Gaia gaining prominent notoriety of late, there’s a definite eye on this whole sort of thing more than ever, and Ecocide unfortunately won’t be able to capitalise on the undeniable momentum that this record would have created for them.

Ecocide’s  particular brand of epic crust is made all the more versatile by vocalist Heidi’s violin skills added to the mix as the opening violin line of creeping sorrow encroach on first track, the appropriately titled, ‘Despair’ before a thundering judder of double kick drums and searing riffs interrupt. It’s all topped off by Heidi’s wretched throat scraping vocals. It’s at this point that Ecocide's MO with When Will It End? is made abundantly clear.

The band aren’t reinventing the wheel by any means. This has been all done before, particularly by Fall of Efrafa with their trilogy of albums but that doesn’t stop Ecocide from still administering a sound kicking of their own. There’s an unavoidable black metal influence that permeates this record too, specifically in the vocals, with Heidi’s scathing shrieks that would be just as much at home in a snow blanketed forest.

Except, as the band’s name would suggest, there’s an overriding them of man’s destruction of the environment, something very much shown by the lumbered forest in the artwork and perhaps the record’s title is serving as a plea to end such unnecessary destruction. Whatever the case, the band’s sonic destruction, and creeping airs of melody, are not questionable. Taking elements of the crust and hardcore backgrounds that they quite seemingly come from, with judicial notes from black and doom metal, When Will It End? is a powerful LP in every sense. Just a shame it’s their last.

8/10