Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Deathcore quartet SIGNS OF THE SWARM present their fifth full-length album. Titled "Amongst the Low & Empty," the album has eleven songs. The title track is the first one. From the first few notes, you can tell this is Deathcore. The guitars build a cold and sterile sound, that is as heavy as boulders pounding down a cliff side, and the vocals are brutal assaults with guttural overtones at times. The drums vary from heavy thuds to rolling machine gun fire. "Towers of Toros" is similar in scope. The riffs are done with surgical precision, and there are even some ambient moments among the brutal ones. The riffs cut like a finely sharped scalpel, clean through skin and bone.

"Borrowed Time" is a quick song just under three-minutes. With MESHUGGAH like chugging, it carries a heavy cadence the entire time. "Between Fire & Stone" is another deadly song. So far, the band clearly has the heavy side of the genre down. But this time, there are some clever meter changes that almost seem impossible to pull off. Are these guys mathematicians, or musicians? My money is on both. "Dreamkiller" is just as cold and sterile. It's almost like trying to describe where someone lives, and everything in their world is angled and blue in tone. People go about their business in complete solitude, without saying a word to each other.

"The Witch Beckons" begins with an assault on the ears that has never been heard before. From there, the sound is a little more structured and carefully crafted. One thing that you can't accuse this band of is lackadaisical musicianship. "Echelon" has some vocal effects that make it sound like demon trying to break out of his cage. The sound is impossibly low, slow, and grinding...the kind of grind that will wear right through you until you are reduced to ash by the end. "Faces Without Names" features a lot of rigid and skintight work on the kit from drummer Bobby Crow, and some of the blast beat sections are just too fast to even count. The electronic sounds towards the end are different, and offer a little break to the insanity.

"Malady" closes the album. There are all kinds of different sound here...pig squeals, electronic strikes, screams, fuzz, and other "noises" that fit in well with the music. It skids to a halt at the end, and is buried. Overall, take a look at the album cover when you consider the genre and what might lay within. Intricate ice crystals make millions of little scenes within one another, and white represents the frigid nature of the music. The album sports some truly fantastic musicianship, but the genre boundaries are pretty thin to begin with here...the band expanded them the best they could on "Amongst the Low & Empty."