Ring of Scars-Trust-82%

Ring of Scars is an interesting band. They combine elements of death metal, industrial, and hardcore, and stunningly, they actually do a good job with it. I ran across them on Myspace, where they had an offer up to get a free copy of their demo song, Trust. I took up on this offer, and when I popped the song on, I was pleasantly surprised by the wall of sound coming out of my speakers.

The song starts with a soft guitar riff, and by soft, I don't mean clean or lightly distorted, just quiet. After this, the same riff comes back full force, backed by thundering drums and roaring vocals. Unfortunately, the drums are either highly triggered or programmed, and sound a bit unrealistic. The guitars have a nice crunch to them without going Slayer on our ass, and are distorted enough to satisfy the die-hard death metal fanatics. The vocals are a combination of Tommy Vext from Divine Heresy and a little bit of Corey Taylor from Slipknot, but only in the chorus, which is quite melodic. After another verse/chorus of the same type, along comes a breakdown, not as in CHUG CHUG deathcore, but a clean, melodic break. The vocals turn to soft, lilting singing, wrapped in a chorus/echo effect. But after 30 seconds of dreamy clean guitars and vocals, a face-melting riff interrupts the beauty, doubling the speed of the previous distorted riffs. This in turn leads to the end of the song.

Now for the negative aspects of the song.
1. Drums-the programmed feel of and the somewhat dry tone brings the song down.
2. Lyrical content-the singer seems to feel like yelling/screaming "fuck!" 10 times in a song makes good lyrics.
3. Vocals in the chorus-the Slipknot-style forced singing is too reminiscent of nu-metal.

Overall, it's a good start for their next album. I'll pick it up, if not just to hear the re-master of this song.