CARDINALS PRIDE are a Canadian Metalcore collective based in Quebec City. Formed in 2010 and now signed to New Damage Records, they released their debut LP, "The Quiet Erosion" in late 2017, and today I shall inform thee about my deep thoughts on this glorious piece of art.

The kickoff track ("Still Alright") is incredibly catchy and showcases the band's more dissonant, Post-Hardcore influenced sound, but also presents some clean guitar parts and clean vocals as well. That may sound like too much, but these musical aspects are arranged very well and it has an overall healthily polarized feel to it; a great banger, even though I'm not a fan of the record's clean vocals at all. It's not the lack of character or technical ability, it's just his voice (Alexis') that I can't get behind - I personally find it obnoxious, but I have no specific reason to dislike it. Alexis' style is very reminiscent of ARCHITECTS' Sam Carter, in that he kind of screams and sings at the same time. It's not necessarily unique, but something not every vocalist possesses. It's also not as well executed as Sam's. But overall, the 'harshes' on this record are all pretty good, and even have some intense highlights like in track No. 2's ending and its follow-up, "Masterpiece".

Speaking of "Masterpiece", I really dig the instrumental of the song, but again, the cleans, which attempt to be catchy in the chorus, ultimately make the song fail to satisfy expectations after the first two tracks - which are both strong 8s.

The effort's overall instrumentation leans more towards Post-Hardcore (with a little bit of Mathy dissonance on some guitar parts) than "traditional" Metalcore. It includes solos and breakdowns, clean and distorted sounds (obviously), as well as dissonant and melodic elements. Diverse and well executed, but nothing really original. Tracks such as "Servitude & Solitude" showcase drummer Nicolas S' technical ability and his godly snare, while the previously mentioned opening track and "Contre Courant" (among others) display the axemen's skills.

I found the album to be borderline cringy when they try to convey very strong feelings, like in the song "Low", where Alexis tells a lovely story of how he almost killed himself, but he's "here to stay"; and even though there's a pretty good metaphor here, the lyrics are rather... I guess "fake deep" and forced, which, coupled up with the song's musical ideas (or lack thereof) left me completely untouched.
My favourites of the album are definitely "Still Alright", "Deluder" and "Breach". All of them have great mixes of melody and dissonance, stellar drum work and "Breach" easily has Alexis' best vocal performance, and I gotta say, even his cleans aren't so bad on that track.

Unfortunately, these 3 songs are the only ones that I can wholeheartedly consider "good". The rest of the album is just full of somewhat bland and uninteresting core music with no actual creative ideas behind it. It never quite reaches that greatness that defines the aforementioned three songs. Individually, all other pieces of music on this LP contain good instrumentals, but it never comes together as well on most tracks. Perhaps on the closing one, "Liberty", they actually come very close, but even that feels lacking of original musical approaches.

Overall, "The Quiet Erosion" is a fairly solid mixture of lots of other bands' stylistic aspects, with not much originality really brought into said mix. This record is the definition of "it's good for what it is", and I think that's the bottom line. I'm feeling a decent 6 on this LP.