:: The Red Shore - Unconsecrated

The Red Shore

While in the process of recording their debut full-length album, and out on the road supporting All Shall Perish on their Australian tour, tragedy struck when The Red Shore’s minibus veered off the road and crashed, killing the band’s vocalist Damien Morris and their merchandiser Andy Milner. Rather than fold, the Geelong based band (who are now made up of former bassist/new vocalist Jamie Hope, guitarists Jason Leombruni and Roman Koester, ex-Picture The End bassist Jon Green and drummer Jake Green) continues to look toward the future, and have finally released their long awaited debut full-length effort ‘Unconsecrated’. In simplistic terms, The Red Shore play your typical modern day sounding death influenced metalcore, which initially means that ‘Unconsecrated’ is pretty much your fairly run of the mill metalcore release. While there’s no denying that the band are more than capable musicians in their own right, it has to be said that unless you’re new to the whole death/metalcore scene, or just have a passion for the genre, ‘Unconsecrated’ simply offers nothing that hasn’t already been done a thousand times before. Despite retaining an element of the band’s past (Morris still managed to record vocals on ‘The Garden Of Impurity’, ‘Your Chariot Awaits’ and ‘The Forefront Of Failure’), and managing to host an array of guest appearances from All Shall Perish’s Hernan ‘Eddie’ Hermida, Bleeding Through’s Brandan Schieppati, Misery Signal’s Karl Schubach and Zao’s Daniel Weyandt on ‘The Architects Of Repulsion’, ‘Unconsecrated’ is a forgettable album at best. The Red Shore have managed to overcome tragedy to come through the other side with ‘Unconsecrated’ intact and ready to take the said album out to the masses. And I say good on them for having the fortitude to do that. But let me also say that unless they come up with some genuinely killer songs to match their ability on their instruments, they’ll be playing to diminishing crowds as the whole metalcore movement eventually runs out of gas.