I hope I will be forgiven for, having glanced the the cover art before listening to the music itself, mistakenly expecting this album to be an all out dirty hardcore crust punk onslaught and not the polished-but-aggressive metalcore songs that Diamond actually contains.
In all fairness, Stick To Your Guns strike me as being among the more potent metalcore-bands, and their style definitely belongs to the more hardcore-oriented end of the metalcore, featuring riot-vocals and a lot of steret attitude, which is especially prevalent in 'Empty Heads' and 'Life in a Box' as well as 'Bringing You Down'. However, Stick To Your Guns also feature several elements from the more melodic type of metalcore, such as clean vocals and even some almost poppy ooh-ooh-whoah-aahs in a tracks like 'Against Them All' , 'We Still Believe', and 'Bringing You Down'. Stick To Your Guns do not overdo this, however, and I think it works pretty well most of the time. The obligatory metalcore breakdowns are also there, and, again, unlike many other metalcore artists – especially deathcore ones – Stick To Your Guns do not overdo things, and many of the breakdowns are groovy have a very moshing-friendly quality to them. In addition to the many hardcore elements, Stick To You Gun also make use of thrash metal aesthetics every now and then, giving some of the tracks an almost crossover feel to them.
The production is, as mentioned, quite polished, but it does not hinder the aggression and heaviness in the music itself, and, actually, the album has an overall quite metallic ring to it. Also, this of course allows one to hear what is actually going on and to enjoy the rhythmic details that the band use to make their breakdowns sound interesting.
Diamond is a quite good metalcore album, and I especially like how Stick To Your Guns remind us, by retaining a lot of hardcore elements, that metalcore did, after all, develop from hardcore. My personal preferences are the more hardcore-oriented tracks like 'Empty Heads' and 'Life in a Box' as well as 'Bringing You Down' and 'Build Upon the Sand', but this is definitely an album I can easily listen to in its entirety. Fans of modern hardcore and more edgy metalcore should definitely check it out.
Tracklist:
1. Diamond
2. Against Them All
3. Such Pain
4. Bond
5. We Still Believe
6. Ring Loud
7. Empty Heads
8. Beyond the Sun
9. Life in a Box
10. Brining You Down
11. D(I AM)OND
12. Build Upon the Sand
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