Chelsea Grin – Ashes to Ashes (Album Review)

Ashes to Ashes is the third studio album by deathcore outfit Chelsea Grin released July 8, 2014 via Artery Recordings. The album peaked at 27 on the Billboard 200 chart, 3 on the US Indie chart, 8 on the US Rock chart and 4 on the US Hard Rock chart! There were three singles released before the release of the album; ‘Letters’ on December 17, 2013, ‘Angels Shall Sin, Demons Shall Pray’ on May 12, 2014 and ‘Playing With Fire’ on June 4, 2014. The entire album, save for a few tracks, sounds like one long song. For the most part, however fans seems to be enjoying it. Despite that fact, there were 3-4 songs that I actually really liked. The first of which being ‘Sellout’, speculation suggests that it was a stab at fellow deathcore band Attilla; that is either confirmed or denied. Some might call the song inappropriate, but I think it’s hilarious. The second was ‘Dust to Dust…’, it was decent. I’m not exactly sure how deathcore works, but I feel if cleans were included it would have been amazing (are cleans allowed in deathcore?). ‘Ashes…’ track 14 is a nice, mellow, piano instrumental which leads right into the last track ‘…to Ashes’, a driving, heavy, in your face instrumental. Some songs also seem to sounds over produced and/or compressed. However. that could just be youtube.

Rating: 3.5/5- I try to look at each album objectively if it’s a genre I’m not exactly fond of. There were parts of the album I really enjoyed, and there were aspects I didn’t enjoy so much. For not being a huge fan of deathcore, there we more aspects of this album than I thought I’d like. Don’t take this as bashing, or anything like that, there are people who legitimately like deathcore, it’s just not for me, but I’m always willing to give something a try. Definitely take a listen for yourself!