Album Review: Bodysnatcher - Hell Is Here, Hell Is Home
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Whether by design or the result of the incomprehensibly complex logistics of going out on tour, Floridan deathcore / beatdown mob, Bodysnatcher, have been and gone from these shores about a month before their new album is scheduled to hit the UK’s record stores. I had been fortunate enough to have been able to hear Hell Is Here, Hell Is Home, the band’s fourth full length record, before going to the Manchester show, and the sheer brutality of their performance that night, including three new songs found here, convinced me that it was only a matter of time until Bodysnatcher’s brand of confrontational deathcore would find a wider audience.
Coming four years on from the last record, Bleed-Abide, and with only the 2024 EP Vile Conduct to slake the fans’ thirst, Hell Is Here… opens it’s unrelenting assault with The Maker; hard-hitting straight out of the gate, there’s no foreplay, no chance to talk it out on offer, just instant aggression through a devastatingly heavy bottom-end and some of the most slamming, slow and dirtiest riffs imaginable. Violent Obsession seems designed to be an atmospheric pit filler – certainly was in Manchester – having a higher tempo and, strange as it may sound, more commercial appeal in its punchy presentation. On the other side, the third track from that setlist, Blade Between the Teeth, takes a different approach in its edgy and unsettling attack, and some of the record’s most explosive breakdown moments.
Hell Is Here, Hell Is Home plays largely to a formula in which songs establish themselves and in the latter half introduce the slamming, beatdown elements. Writhe and Coil ups the tempo after The Maker’s more brooding reflection, Plague of Flies finds vocalist Kyle Medina snarling and barking as the musical element begin to introduce delicate underscored elements, secreted within the song. Plague… may well be one of the record’s punchiest moments, with percussion that could signal the end of life as we know it, but May Your Memory Rot feels as though the subject matter alone takes this to dark and scary places. A more traditional metalcore anthem, but the vitriol spat by Kyle is palpable.
As the record starts into its second half, No Savior’s anti-religious rant opens with a drawn out, sludgy intro, before heading off into cosmic realms fashioned by guitarist Kyle Carter; Two Empty Caskets is one of Hell Is Here…’s more understated moments, Chris Whited’s drums and Kyle Shope’s bass locking down a bouncing beat; Terror’s Scott Vogel lends his pipes to the heavy hardcore of the more traditional, Survive or Die, and the closest the album come to a title track, Hell Is Home, brings everything together through fast tempos, gang vocals and even a little bit of groove in the mid-section. Resisting the urge to go out on a bang, Bodysnatcher conclude the song, and record, with an unexpected ambient moment
Clocking in at a little over half-an-hour, Hell Is Here, Hell Is Home is a feast for those willing to go on a musical exploration. Those not, and just wanting to have your face ripped-off by the utter inhuman musical brutality of three lads called Kyle and one called Chris, are in for an equally good time.
