01. Loss Of A Kingdom
02. Night Wept
03. Keep His Name Sacred And Pure
04. Days Feel Rehearsed
05. Same Joke Twice [feat. Tim Jones]
06. Cadaver Synod [feat. Maurice White]
07. Proverbs 7:22
08. Collected Messages Of Abuse
09. Faithful Dreams
10. Permission To Rest [feat. Sasha Schilbrack-Cole]
The challenges of suitably categorizing and describing bands that loosely get thrown under a ‘blackened hardcore’ umbrella is something I’ve discussed a few times before in reviews. Even compared to those other acts, however, Low Before The Breeze unleash a blend of vicious noise that seems to draw from the whole spectrum of extreme metal and other music sounds.
A Hole Beneath The Home We Shared is the debut full-length album from the Atlanta, Georgia quartet, and it is lyrically charged by heavy topics of heartbreak, violence and religious guilt. It’s the kind of album for which ‘hardcore’ feels like as useful an overarching label as any, but is also feels grossly ill-fitting to summarize the breadth of music integrated into the album. At different times of the record, I find myself picking up queues of hardcore, mathcore, grindcore, sludge, dissonant black, death doom, industrial and post-metal, alongside adjacent styles such as screamo and noise rock. What’s surprising about A Hole Beneath The Home We Shared is not that they find space within a sub-40-minute runtime to fit all of these influences in, but that the end result still feels cohesive and logical.
Naturally, in covering such a smorgasbord of styles, there is inevitably going to be some chop-changing within and between songs, and the opening couple of minutes of “Night Wept” is a whiplash-inducing rush of switching between segments, from an initial flurry of mathcore belligerence into a gloomy spoken word atmospheric passage, back into grindcore, onto trudging sludge, and further into dissonant harshness, all within the span of two minutes. However, that only reaches the halfway point of the song, and the track’s second half changes tack completely by focusing entirely on a single idea, a snare roll driving a bleak, dissonant yet atmospheric passage.
Although it is a very aggressive album, A Hole Beneath The Home We Shared does explore more subdued vibes, whether it be in the form of dark ambience or static noise at the beginning of songs (such as leading into fierce opener “Loss Of A Kingdom”, or triggering a brooding drum roll in the beginning of “Days Feel Rehearsed”), or as complete tracks. “Keep His Name Sacred And Pure” and “Collected Messages Of Abuse” are both brief electronic-based interludes with grim spoken word samples on top of industrial/dub foundations. While there’s no tonal respite, the reduction in musical aggression affords some degree of levity amidst the ferocity of much of the album’s material otherwise.
Going back to that ‘blackened hardcore’ label, probably the one song it fits best is “Proverbs 7:22”, a blend of hardcore/grindcore vicious attack with blackened tremolo riffing. Black metal is given a more prominent role in the album closer “Permission To Rest”, an initially cavernous, doomy song featuring guest blackened rasps from Sasha Schilbrack-Cole (Malevich) before unleashing dissonant black metal riffs and blasts. The song is the longest here, and it does find plenty of time to explore other sounds, however, whether it be the surprisingly warm post-rock levity of its midsection or the janky extremity of its closing minutes.
Another song that travels all over the shop is “Cadaver Synod”; with the noise rock instrumentation and anguished guest vocals of Maurice White (Apostle), its opening stages are among the more immediately memorable of the record, but a sudden departure into what feels like alt rock is but a decoy, as it subsequently evolves into Cult Of Luna-style trudging riffing and then death doom malevolence. Other metal bands I found myself briefly having my mind taken to included Conjurer for the tasty sludge/hardcore riffs of “Days Feel Rehearsed”, and Inter Arma for the vicious blackened death segments of “Same Joke Twice”.
The production of A Hole Beneath The Home We Shared has a degree of roughness to it, but it is roughness that feels apt for this style mash-up, and for this tone; it accentuates the pain conveyed in the vocals, whether those from frontman Andrew Spann or from the various guest features, and it lends an added harshness to the album’s most punishing moments. At the same time, it doesn’t undermine the rare moments of slight melody, whether it be the unexpected Southern rock-influenced guitar licks during “Same Joke Twice”, or the screamo touches detected in certain tracks, and particularly the lighter-toned “Faithful Dreams”.
For a fairly short album, there’s a lot to unpack when it comes to A Hole Beneath The Home We Shared, but Low Before The Breeze should be commended for managing to bring it all together in such an accomplished manner here.
 | Written on 19.06.2025 by Hey chief let’s talk why not |