Shoving feedback and a heavy instrumental build out of the way, neck-tat sporting vocalist Jacob Bannon skewers a two-minute sermon on the opening track, “Heartache”: “We are all falling down/ We are all falling/ Every word that you pray/ Makes another slave/ Every idol that you build/ Brings another plague.” When the mathy mid-tempo returns, the song appropriately rams bass-first into “Hellhound”, a one-minute rip-roar of in-the-red calisthenics. And then, well, it’s gone, replaced by the equally taut “Sacrifice”: “Hit the lights/ I’ve had enough/ Guilt to build a city/ Shame to fill a sea/ Reasons to give up and lose everything/ Regret to burn this body/ Filth to cut these hands/ Reasons to bury this and everything we have.” Vengeance? It’s only 58 seconds long. Its motto: “I’m built for war.”
