“It’s time to play hide and seek with my psychosis.“
Hailing from Newcastle, October Ends offer up a sound that merges and blends various genres, creating a concoction of trap, metalcore and djent which will keep listeners on their toes. Adding to this is a variation of vocal performance throughout Phases, with all but one member of the quintet flexing their vocal chords throughout the record. Phases is the follow up to their 2020 record, Zodiac, which landed them a deal with label UNFD, and its incredibly on-brand release date is just one curious element of the interest surrounding October Ends‘ possibilities.
There is an immediate throwback quality to Phases, with its opening moments in “Destroy Us All” and “Call Me Before I’m Dead” leaning into the Warped Tour sound that was rife in the early 2010s. With pitched synths sitting in the background, the trade off between cleans sitting on the chorus and the harsher vocals commanding the verses a present structure throughout the record. This isn’t to say it’s a complete throwback to that era, however, with later tracks such as “Play Time” feeling like an enhanced version of what came before it. Even so, this does raise the immediate question as to whether it’s an era that is worth revisiting, and it leaves Phases on the whole feeling dated.
With the aforementioned “Call Me Before I’m Dead” featuring Kid Brooke and offering up a vicious breakdown and verses that rival Hacktivist, it’s a high point of the record that is one I’d recommend worth visiting. As the record progresses, these breakdowns do become decreasingly potent; as the record hits the breakdown in “One More Round“, it fails to strike any real reaction due to being too familiar across the record, leaving a lingering feeling of perhaps these moments are heavy merely for the sake of being heavy. This is fair enough if it’s their purpose, but it’s just a deeply saturated market, and Phases fails to stand out.
There are some more melodic and pop-esque cuts in Phases, most notability the creatively named, “Hero“. With the synths leading on the hooks and trap style beats accompanied with fittings, there is an element that draws the ear in with its synthesised vocals on the chorus. Yet it fully fails to land a blow, once again missing a special something to elevate it. Penultimate track “Lay Here” is a full on early 2010s ballad, yelling “Is there anyone else out there?“, and further laments familiar themes within its lyrics. This, combined with the incredibly compressed production throughout Phases, does cause for a challenging listen on the auto-tune-sounding cleans.
On immediate inspection, most notably on their singles, there is certainly an appeal to October Ends. They have an almost daft sense of fun across Phases, and perhaps in the right setting there is something to be enjoyed here. In isolation and across a full playthrough, Phases ends up feeling like an obtuse attempt at fusing together a sound that the genre has thankfully moved on from with more modern elements such as trap. There will be those out there who still seek out and enjoy this sound, yet for those who have seen it come and go, there will be little offered other than a slightly reminiscing thought of bands such as Asking Alexandria and Abandon All Ships from 2012.
4/10
Phases is out this Friday via UNFD, and can be pre-ordered here.