I wasn't gonna pull together a post this week, but then I passed by a tweet from hate5six about Wilmington, DE's Foreign Hands late in the day yesterday and decided to give 'em a shot. The band name wasn't particularly conjuring visions of greatness for me, but holy shit, I was floored within seconds of checking out their stellar two-song Summer '18 Promo. We're talking raging death metalcore akin to, say, the late-'90s/early-'00s Lifeforce Records roster here. And, honestly, that's a sound that I don't tend to love—sometimes it works, sometimes... not so much—but Foreign Hands absolutely shines in that they combine that style with a high-quality sense of complexity and energetic melody reminiscent of the earlier Misery Signals material, and that's a high fuckin' compliment.
The group's prior EP from the winter of 2017 is still killer, but it definitely seems as though this new material is more technically advanced and leaning harder on the ripping-death-metal-via-classic-European-metalcore attack. Stream or download both releases via Bandcamp, and I'll damn sure be looking forward to hearing more!
