UNI/VS Can Only Muster A Trite Metalcore Sound On ‘Deaths Door’ EP

I don't need to add anything witty or smart here. The title says it all. 

Hailing from the second-head capital of Australia right next to Tasmania, UNI/VS - made up of members from other small time local metalcore bands - released their 'Deaths Door' EP earlier this year on June 12th. (Wait, shouldn't there be an apostrophe in that title? Whatever, it doesn't matter). And I bring this release up now as while I never even once heard of that EP nor the band themselves upon the initial release nearly four months ago, the band's vocalist Scott Dudley Willis recently messaged our Facebook page asking for an article or review of some kind. So here we all are now.

The track that perhaps sums up everything you need to know about UNI/VS's melodic metalcore sound (pronounced "Universe", by the way) and this EP's overall quality the best (or as it would be, the worst) is the title track. Now, to be fair, that song's chorus isn't half bad and the key lyric of "No one is for forever/not even God" is quite a wicked line for heavy music such as this. Yet while the track’s music video was done up by our good Brissy friend, Ben from Third Eye Visuals - who also occasionally shoots gigs for KYS when he's not touring the world - it's the EP's single and subsequent eponymous track that I take real umbrage with.

Oh, ‘Deaths Door’, you say? See, I preferred it when it was just called ‘Dispossession’. No, for real, check out from 0:47 to the 1:15 mark and you’ll see that these guys, sans the lyrics and that distinctive guitar riff, are basically covering that old Northlane fan-fave. Yes, much like how Westhand tapped into some eerily similar 'Quantum Flux' vibes on their single 'Illumine' or like how The Weight Of Silence basically played a note-for-note section of the breakdown in A Day To Remember’s ‘The Downfall Of Us’ on ‘Sickness Unknown’, UNI/VS show off their influences a little too clearly.

As for the rest of the five-track EP, it's passable at best; really just another generic metalcore EP through and through in terms of production, tones, and song structuring. At least, I first assumed so, as all I heard at first from the wider release were the thirty-second Apple Music clips that the band shared via their Facebook page as I figured I'd experience all I was going to extract from their music after listening to the titular track. And boy, I wasn't fucking wrong when I later listened to the whole EP. They really are just another run-of-the-mill, spacey metalcore band with little else going on for them I'm afraid.

Anyway, stream UNI/VS's 'Deaths Door' below and see what I've been cynically ranting about: