  
The UK has been home to many great bands and seeing
bands from my own country thrive brings me excessive
amounts of pleasure, so that there then leads
me to this new album from Reading based bruisers
Malefice; “V” is new for 2013 and
I must say as much as I love them a 7 track album
feels just a tad stingy but never the less it’s
all about quality not quantity, they have always
had their own distinctive style it displayed leaps
and bounds in regards to technical writing and
the dynamics of some of their material has been
unreal at times.
The title track here opens up the album and I
must say holy fucking shit! Excuse me but where
the hell has this come from?! They’ve always
been fantastic writers but the production value
and sheer quality of tone they have going on here
is next level to anything they’ve put out
so far, with the keyboards and what not I can
feel a sense of American act Still Remains but
far past anything they could have ever hoped to
produce, they fall between tech metal and metalcore
as here you can hear the breakdowns and drops
but… I don’t know what to say because
I pure and simply was not prepared for something
like that, it fits into the route that a lot of
British acts have been taking as of late such
as Bleed From Within and BMTH; instead though
of simply follow the status quo they’ve
retained the aggressive technical side of themselves
that is what I loved, they’ve mixed that
with some gnarly sub drops and dirty breakdowns
to bring forward a new era of Malefice material.
There are even clean vocal lines on some songs
as well bringing together the full metalcore package
wrapped in a tight film of impressive musical
ability (“The Great Deceiver”, “Wasted”
& “Blueprint” for reference).
I am completely and utterly gobsmacked; so much
in fact that without a moment of hesitation I
can safely say the quantity vs. quantity comment
I originally made can be tallied up successfully
to say quality by far overpowered the quantity
but my God, I wish there was more to this record.
Top notch material that definitely warrants this
being on my list of considerable album of the
year candidates.
4.5/5
Review by James Webb
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