The Fisher is a Christian metalcore group from western Washington. Their debut EP, Inception, releases to digital stores everywhere on Friday.
Inception begins with an eerie “Intro”, which doesn’t heat up until the end when the listener hears guitars in the background. These guitars slowly get louder before kicking into “Thirsty?”, the first full song on the EP. The singer’s voice is powerful and has an almost soulful vibe to it. Musically the song is pretty run-of-the-mill metalcore and the screaming feels forced, but the guitar riff is catchy enough to blend well with the singing. “Face in the Floor” is next, with a nice guitar-driven intro. There is a lot of going back and forth between clean and harsh vocals. Something about the singing on this song seems lacking, with not nearly as much power as the first track, but the musicianship makes up for whatever may be missing with the vocals. “Shadowchaser” starts out slow and soft, and then builds with a nice ¾ groove to it under the screaming. About two and a half minutes in, the pace picks up and gets back into a regular time signature, with the two vocalists dueling over heavy yet melodic instrumentation. Eventually the screaming takes over for the most part vocally, before the music slows to a halt and fades away into nothing. The title track, “Inception” starts out with an alternative-like guitar pattern, before again blasting at full volume. Musically I’m reminded of the mid-2000’s era of the post-hardcore “scene”, which is definitely not a bad thing. However, there still feels like something is missing in the vocals. “Over My Dead Body” closes out the EP, and starts off with a loud shriek over dissonant riffage. It then kicks into a neat pattern, and later on some gang vocals make their entrance, leading to perhaps the best singing on Inception since “Thirsty?” This same thing happens twice more until the song ends, thus concluding the EP as well.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ws0RKnWFhg&h=297&w=450]Inception has its high moments, but unfortunately those points are few and far between. Despite the slightly above-par musicality and overall inspirational lyrics, I found this release hard to get into because of the vocals, which at times seem to conflict each other. There are only a few parts where the vocals really stood out, and those were mostly in “Thirsty?” Don’t get me wrong, The Fisher has a lot of talent and potential, but they still have some work to do if they ever want to be among the best in heavy music.
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