Style: death metal, southern rock
Primary Emotions/Themes: Deep seeded anger towards one's past
Thoughts: I sometimes wondered what would happen if one of the deathcore groups tried to go full on death metal. I've gotten that answer a few times, primarily with Job for a Cowboy and The Faceless. On The Valley, Whitechapel gave their own interpretation of the genre.
I've been following Whitechapel for quite a few years at this point. I got into them with their third album and was impressed with their intense version of deathcore. Over time though they started releasing albums that were less to my liking, less death metal and more core. Not really my thing, with The Valley that all changed.
The Valley has the band dropping nearly all of the core influences, there's hardly any breakdowns on here. In their place we have pretty intense death metal with Phil's vocals being a huge step up from the past few albums (including some well done cleans). This resulted in the bands most diverse album to date with the opening track being perhaps the most representative of the album as a whole.
There are a couple of stinkers on here, but really the quality of the rest of the album more than makes up for it. It's easily their best in my eyes and is a fantastic starting place for someone looking to get into the band.
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