Gideon level up with new two-track, 'No Love/No One'

Gideon show-off dark & heavy new layers on 'No Love/No One'.

Have you ever listened to a new song by a band that you already like that is so damned good that it just makes you laugh? Have you ever been that happy with a song, that it's genuinely hilarious how magnificent it actually is? This precise situation happened to me recently upon hearing the new two-track Gideon EP, 'No Love/No One.' Now, going into this little fill-in release, my expectations were quite high. Gideon is a band that I’ve followed since the release of 2012's 'Milestone', and, despite 2014's 'Calloused' not being AS monumental as it’s predecessor, they have yet to disappoint me. In fact, if you were to remove 'Calloused' from their discography, (you shouldn’t, it’s a great record) you'd find that all of their material has gotten better since their inception in 2008. And 'No Love/No One' is certainly no exception to this rule, as it shows Gideon diving into their heaviest and darkest sound to date after a decade in the game.

As just mentioned, this very short EP is so fucking fantastic that it’s basically comical. Not even twenty seconds into the first song and the title track, I found myself grinning like an idiot. The song 'No Love/No One' dives into Gideon’s newer, riffier, beatdown-centric hardcore style, with its booming drums and straight-up fight riffs. There's a darker sense of atmosphere creeping into the track, and with brief dynamic spaces and quick guitar squeals, yet Gideon have never sounded so intense. This song has me completely hooked from its pounding intro right over to its heavy, bark-covered outro. This is mosh-pit central and I love it. It's almost stupid how aggro and heavy this thing is.

The EP grows even darker and heavier with it's second and concluding track, '2 Deep.' This pissed-off number opens up with a Code Orange-esque sludgy mess of a riff, instantly introducing you to this new and improved Gideon. This staccato-driven cut also sees the American group running headfirst into a creepier, atmospheric sound, with it's clean tremolo-laden midsection during one of the song’s hectic breakdowns.

However, '2 Deep' features the only moment of this two-track that I disliked in any way. I’ve always stood by the belief that tempo changes should never happen unless they are fully necessary for the song. Even though there are multiple tempo changes that work throughout this EP, the meter change at the end of '2 Deep' feels out of place and ends an otherwise perfect song in a slightly confusing fashion. However, it should be noted that Gideon only has a select few tempo changes in their entire discography, usually sticking within the same mid-tempo hardcore approach. So the fact that they were able to pull off multiple of these in this EP with only a little effect to the songs’ overall flow says something in of itself.

With all of this said, the real highlight of this 7" is the massive performance from vocalist Daniel McWhorter. Daniel has never sounded better than how he does here. His screams are so much more emotive and angry than on any of their past releases, and his lyrics are still just as furious and as fuming as ever. “I’d say see you in hell, but I don’t want to see you on the way down” is perhaps their second best one-liner (behind “racist coward” from 'Scapegoat', of course); which leads into one of the hardest hitting moments of either track.

'No Love/No One' is perhaps the best version of Gideon yet. Time and time again, this Alabama wrecking crew has proved their worth in the metalcore and hardcore scenes. And this time, they mean fucking business! Everything about these two songs spectacularly carries a kind of venomous energy that is often missing from other bands within the very same circles. There’s just something simple about Gideon’s music that gets you moving, that makes your blood pump even harder. If these were the songs chosen to be left off the new album they're currently recording, then I can't wait to hear what we'll get from Gideon later this year.