Shifting How Hardcore is Done

For whatever reason, there’s sometimes an appealing quality to someone outright yelling in your face. That sensation of another voice rattling through your brain is a feeling unlike any other. Factor in a particularly arduous racket of blasting beats, husky bawls and somewhat technical riffs and the entire package becomes a full on aural assault. This is especially the case for Florida’s AXIS, whose sophomore album Shift launches song bombs of mechanical and experimental hardcore metal onto listening ears as a calculated onslaught.

Including members of the more “emo” hardcore Floridian act Gouge Away, AXIS applies similar aspects to their sound with Shift, taken to an even further level — not without a little bit of ease, though. The album starts out with the fairly mild instrumental track “Shift I,” which doesn’t offer much besides under a minute’s worth of lightly preparing you for the intensity of “Fear and Impulse.” Almost immediately, a veering back and forth between curt bursts of hardcore riffage and more math-y breaks come into play.

This exchange between brutish and cerebral approaches is what Shift is essentially built off of. On “Solipsism,” drummer Thomas Cantwell booms each part of his kit with fierce intent. Dylan Downey’s vocals are minimal in their execution, as his screams never fully reach peak shrill or even total shout. Regardless, they are effective — especially as he belts out “Can you feel the pressure / Beyond your control?”

A simplicity like this, specifically with a hard-meets-mathcore album, has the potential to halt the album’s flow. But in Shift’s case, it doesn’t. If anything, like on tracks like “Consume,” it creates anticipation. Bass takes the wheel for majority of this instrumental, which basically serves as an extended intro into “Soma,” which itself is more a platform for funky guitar playing. It’s followed by the album’s strongest track,”The Alturist,” which does slightly slow down the energy of Shift pleasantly, with a bit of a sludgy dirge that whirrs down into “Shift II,” before the ending of closing song “Tightrope” drums the album out strong.

That strength isn’t just in Shift as an album, but is showing itself in AXIS as a band themselves. For just their sophomore release each member exhibits nothing sophomoric at all in their execution. Shift is strong, and whatever AXIS drops next will most likely be just as solid, if not more.