Across the board, crossing brutal and very extreme metal with insane punk/hardcore is not a bad thing... but if it is done wrong, can end up being as inviting as the smell of a wet manure field baking in one hundred degree weather. Frankly, I would avoid that sort of music like it had the 'plague'... now I offer up Winds of Plague for review.  Is it, or is it not?

Combining Symphonic styled strains with a wall of Blackened Death Metal then adding in some Deathcore... you get a six member cacophony of sound hailing from California. Truly, this is not your older brothers metal... no fucking way is it even close to it  Winds of Plague is twisted and malicious slab of metal, along the lines of it you got Agnostic Front to join Carcass and Cradle of Filth to make an album.

Songs like the brutal insanity of "Monster" to the very intelligent and harsh lyrics of  "Built for War" show many facets of this band, and showcase their musical talents and yet, there is a bad side to this album. Sounding disjointed in places, coupled with the almost too pristine way it was recorded, it seems to lose some of its strength as the production values cleaned it up... the feel was sort of, recorded out of it.

A rougher, way more raw recording would have been a better way for this awesome band to have gone, including backing off the use of the keyboards somewhat in most of the album.  My criticism aside, this was a very impressive album form a band that is still growing.   I would say that I enjoyed it.