Ya know, sometimes I could hate the Swedes for developing their brand of melodic death metal. But I refrain: who could have predicted that 10 years later American metalcore bands would horde their riffs with poorly implemented hardcore breakdowns and clean melodic choruses that could be ripped right out of a pop punk song on general “rock” radio stations? I highly doubt this was the intent of At the Gates, Eucharist, et al.

And even though they’ve been rightfully made fun of and have had metal fans’ noses turned upwards toward them in rude fashion for the better half of a decade now, metalcore acts still rage on, oblivious to their failure at making good metal. This flood of shitty metal has yet to recede, with the deluge staying within the New Orleans that is metal, drowning people left and right in floating piles of filth, shit, and other toxic bile.

Sea of Treachery is another downpour of such shit into our lovely ocean of brutality. On their debut full length At Daggers Drawn (WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?), Sea of Treachery merges the usual generic melo-death riffs with watered down thrash-isms and mediocre, identity-less growls. If you even remotely listen to any melo-death, you’ve heard this all before and heard it done much better. The clean vocals are there in ample amounts, but somehow Sea of Treachery has the massive distinction of being even gayer at it than the rest of metalcore. Sure, I hate Killswitch Engage, but even those clean vocals don’t sound like a merge between Atreyu and Blink 182. Sea of Treachery manages to mold a brand of clean vocals so shitty that it’s guaranteed to get them ass at the next lunch period of the local high school.

And then there’s the matter of the breakdowns. Damn, every mistake in the book is ripped here. Every last one. These guys make Despised Icon seem tolerable. (Keyword: “seem.”) That’s a fucking feat if there ever was one. BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM. Fuck, it’s so breakdown-intensive you can’t even mosh to it. The only thing this purulent crap recreates is the auditory experience of watching a constipated sumo wrestler loose bowel control with explosive shit, slipping and sliding into other similarly-infected sumo wrestlers as he tries to go to the bathroom. And each sumo in turn is doing the same bloody thing, amounting to a bukkake party of brown festering paint spraying everywhere and copious amount of lard, fat, and flesh swaying in slow motion through the air. Holy fuck, this is bad.

And I’m STILL not really touching how shitty these guys are. Dear God no. This is just their album. If you go to their Myspace- as most young bands nowadays all have- you’ll find a stirring rendition of Paramore’s "Misery Business". And by “stirring rendition” I really mean “blind rabbi with numb hands and no depth perception (if possible) circumcising a little kid with oversized garden shears.” No, they don’t fuck it up. Quite the opposite. They play it DAMN NEAR IDENTICAL. The only changes present are some growls and gang choruses. See, it would have been a good cover if they actually created a metal version of the song that was NOT insanely gay and had ample amounts of balls-deep, ass-raping extremity and heaviness to it. But no, they did nothing of the sort. They went and covered the song exactly, making it no different from the original pop punk band’s rendition. Go there if you don’t believe me. Do it. Wait, no. Don’t. It will blow your mind if you do as to how irreparably shitty these guys are. (Interestingly, though, there are a couple of times where growls on the cover are actually BETTER than the full length. Yikes.)

There is absolutely nothing good about Sea of Treachery. Nothing. Not one iota. There’s not even a chick with a great ass. Just crappy, by-the-books metalcore that deserves to be collected in a pile and buried with all the lost E.T. Atari game cartridges in an unmarked mass grave in the western deserts of America. I hope all the band’s equipment burns in a fire and they never touch instruments ever again. And I hope their whoever signed them at Sumerian Records also contracts syphilis.

Written By: Necro-tron