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It seems a shame to have to muddy the waters of heavy metal, but some bands just won’t fit into the boxes we have created for them.

Birmingham’s Oceans Ate Alaska are an ambitious bunch if nothing else; Lost Isles features, at the very least, a nod to almost every musical movement in alternative culture of the last 20 years.

There are the juddering djenty guitars, the boom-and-burst rhythms of metalcore, the vocal growl to screech of deathcore, the simplistic grooves of nu metal and some emotive clean singing from the post-hardcore book of big choruses. That would mean very little if they couldn’t pen tunes or sculpt those influences into something coherent, so it’s a pleasure to report that songs like_ High Horse_, with its nods to Sempiternal-era Bring Me The Horizon and the Thursday-meets-Sikth ride of Floorboards stick in your head for more than just their everything-but-the-kitchen sink approach to rock and metal. Nu-djent-core? Post-tech-death? Sorry people, but it looks like we’re gonna need to register another subgenre.

Via Stephen Hill

Since blagging his way onto the Hammer team a decade ago, Stephen has written countless features and reviews for the magazine, usually specialising in punk, hardcore and 90s metal, and still holds out the faint hope of one day getting his beloved U2 into the pages of the mag. He also regularly spouts his opinions on the Metal Hammer Podcast.