Albums

Album Review: Shai Hulud

[Album: Misanthropy Pure]
[Label: Metal Blade]

So after a couple years of farewell touring and breaking up, Shai Hulud have returned with a new full-length, on a new label and with a new line-up - business as usual. There was a running joke on certain websites about how it was taking forever for them to complete their final tour and after a period of brief inactivity (and a temporary name-change), Shai Hulud have rolled back into town with another release. I am not entirely sure on the reasons behind their initial breaking up, but I do recall eavesdropping on a conversation of their guitar tech and merch guy a few years, about the future of the band and one issue was that they had trouble appealing to both the metal and hardcore/punk crowds. In 2004, mind you, it was a big thing trying to bridge the gap between the two, without being tied down to or alienating either crowd - too metal for punk and too punk for metal. In 2008 we find them on Metal Blade Records, arguably one of the stronger metalcore labels at the moment.

‘Misanthropy Pure’ appears to be the closest thing to a concept record I’ve heard from Shai Hulud. The theme of misanthropy on this record picks up where 2003’s brutal ‘That Within Blood Ill-Tempered’, left us; namely, in ruins. Album opener ‘Venomspreader’ kicks in pretty much straight away with a thrash-inspired rager of a song and sets the tone for the 40-odd minutes you will find yourself air drumming (air-guitaring is so 2004) and daydreaming of a Mad Max world. The line-up changes haven’t affected the quality of the band’s performance one bit either. New singer Matt Mazzali fits right into the new roster, more than adequately filling in the shoes of Shai Hulud’s previous vocalists.

The title-track, for which there is also a video clip shot by David Brodsky, is easily identifiable as one of the album’s stronger songs and representative of the “new” sound. The sound has not as such changed, as much as it has grown into its skin, by building and expanding upon the melodies and brutalities of ‘Hearts Once Nourished With Hope and Compassion’ and ‘That Within Blood Ill-Tempered’. We get glimpses of what the future of the band may sound like in songs such as ‘Four Earths’ and the album closer ‘Cold Lord Quietus’. They showed everyone a few years back how to do this whole modern crossover metalcore that the likes of Unearth and As I Lay Dying have been peddling, but now they are showing us how awesome that sound will be in five years time, when everyone will be playing catch-up.

So the good news is that it’s not all that different a sound they have these days and that is perhaps one problem that most bands face on their third or fourth full-length release, namely trying to maintain a solid identity. They are not really pushing any envelopes or breaking down any walls of any sort, as much as reinforcing the sound they’ve been known for. That doesn’t mean that they are simply going through the motions either, but that sense of deja-vu that you get sporadically from listening to ‘Misanthropy Pure’ is a bit too regular to ignore, at least for me. It would have been a lot easier to carry on with a different name and change sounds (as little or as much as they pleased) but instead they carried on with the same style and conviction as before, which says loads about Shai Hulud’s commitment. As far as comeback records go (if that’s even applicable to this situation) this is probably as good as they get, without becoming a parody of their former selves. They are not going to lose any fans with this record, but it will be interesting to see whether they will gain many more fans in a scene that is now saturated with similar-sounding bands.

For fans of: As I Lay Dying, Unearth, Poison The Well
Band link = Shai Hulud

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