One of the stinkiest states in the Union, New Jersey, is home to the four-piece deathcore band Ocularis. This band was first presented to me as being brutal death metal. Even seeing the generic EP title, “Roses Are Dead“, I knew this couldn’t be brutal death metal. Sadly, after getting past the one minute introductory instrumental, I was proven right. What was to come next was nearly another 18 minutes of generic deathcore. There is a proven structure to make sure what you’re playing is deathcore, and this young band follows it to a T. Make sure you have a mid-paced death metal/hardcore-styled passage with lots of double-bass rhythms with the annoying hardcore faux-growl on top of everything else. Don’t forget to put in the needed melodic rhythm guitar layered on top of the hardcore slam, or else you are missing an integral piece of the same garbage we have heard before.
“Roses Are Dead” is an exercise in patience, because you are meant to sit still for about 20 minutes of your valuable time and try and see how these guys should be paid attention to any more than the rest of their indistinguishable brethren. The band are certainly proven to be musically competent. But, just because you know how to play the same hardcore beats over and over again does not make your song-writing skills stronger. The only song that doesn’t succumb completely to the barbaric cliches of deathcore is “Face of Plagues”. It’s still generic in a melodic death metal sense with fewer deathcore pitfalls, but it is still a million times better than what the rest of the EP has to offer. Oh well, Ocularis is still putting out far better material than Suicide Silence ever has.
Suicide Silence are terrible. Never listen to them.