Album Review: Gideon - 'Calloused'

24 October 2014 | 12:00 pm | Alex Sievers
Originally Appeared In

Another heavy, generic punch to the face from Gideon.

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Gideon’s music is like that schoolyard bully who beats you up and takes your lunch money day in day out. But just like how some mouth breathing oaf beating you up every day gets old, listening to the band's latest album can get really old, really fucking quickly. To be fair, that is the only criticism of 'Calloused', but just like Clive Palmer, it's a big fucking problem. Otherwise, this is just the band sticking to their usual guns and putting out another solid album.

What may come as a shock to parents who think that this music is 'evil' and pop-washed teens, there are plenty of breakdowns on ‘Calloused’. In fact, they seem to be the main form of musical communication the band uses along with guitar chugs, massive pit calls and gang vocals. So yes, this album is all pretty standard fare for a metalcore band these days. It also shows that the group isn't ready to stray from the path of their already established sound, a sound that they surrounded and beat to death on ‘Costs’ and ‘Milestone’. There’s no new instrumentation and no new musical ideas apart from beating your ears down with typical metalcore riffs and gruff screams.

But wait, in the distance, what is that?! It’s ‘The Pulse’. This is a softer, soothing, and far more dynamic bit of musicianship that doesn’t solely rely on being a heavy number to get its point across. And like a small rock in a softly moving stream, it doesn’t really disturb the flow of the album. Of course, once those serene three minutes are up, ‘Prison Eyes’ pulls the rug out from under you and you again fall into the depths of modern metalcore. Although, that track does have some really interesting guitar leads coming in its last minute and they swoop in to save the day like Gandalf at the end of The Two Towers.

A welcomed guest appearance comes up in ‘Survive’, courtesy of the enigmatic Beartooth vocalist, Caleb Shomo. This song in particular - as well as album closer, 'Drifter' - do bring up some very strong comparisons to fellow scene favourites, The Ghost Inside. Furthermore, lead vocalist Daniel McWhorter sounds suspiciously like Jonathan Vigil of the aforementioned, almost as if they were the same person... band conspiracies aside, it's fair to say that if you were to close your eyes and listen Gideon then TGI, you could easily make the mistake of believing that both bands were one and the same. And hey, fair call because they do sound really bloody similar. The guitars also take a very Sworn In approach and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just that it makes the album that little more generic.

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However, one track in particular 'Momentum’ does have, err, lots of momentum and it soon becomes one of the albums strongest offerings. It's tracks like this and the great eponymous song that really show the crisp mixing and mastering of the album - courtesy of producer Will Putney - which might explain how this album cracked into the top 80 on the Billboard charts.

Callous means a few different things. It can mean to be indifferent, to be insensitive, to be unsympathetic, or to be made hard. Gideon's new album 'Calloused' is definitely callous. It has been made hard and refined by the band's hard work, but it's also completely indifferent and unsympathetic to the fact that it's a shamelessly generic metalcore record.

Calloused

Savage

Survive (Feat. Caleb Shomo of Beartooth)

Expose

World Of Hurt

The Limit

The Pulse

Prison Eyes

Momentum

Drifter