Album review: Whitechapel - This Is Exile

Knoxville’s Whitechapel only formed in 2006, but This Is Exile is their second full-length album, making for a career arc almost as fast as the double-kick drumming that drives their aggressive sound.

Given that Whitechapel are an extreme metal band, it will come as little surprise to know that they named themselves after the London borough where the Jack the Ripper murders took place. Also unsurprisingly - and setting themselves in firm contrast to the stereotypical picture of Texas as a hotbed of fundamentalist Christianity - This Is Exile burgeons with anti-theist lyrics and imagery.

Which is par for the course with brutal metal outfits, of course, though Whitechapel have a few little tricks up their sleeves to differentiate themselves from the other bands of a similar style, doing for extreme metal what the metalcore bands have tried to do with the regular flavour. Hence This Is Exile balances the relentless bludgeon with traded dual vocals and spacious super-heavy beatdown sections.

The rhythm section is Whitechapel’s real strength, with their whole musical edifice being propelled by high-precision blast-beats and offset patterns from the kick drum embellished with road-drill snares and incredibly fast rolling fills. Add some scraping drop-tuned chords with a hint of the Southern metal tone about them and razor-wire lead lines and a scattering of short sharp shred attacks, and This Is Exile adds up to an uncompromising assault on the ears… not to mention your neighbour’s walls.

Whitechapel’s vocalists play off the classic cookie-monster gurgles against demonic throat-shredding screeches, occasionally veering into comparatively clear hardcore bellows as found in “Exalt”. But the minor variations become submerged in the overall tone of This Is Exile, and - despite their efforts to spice things up - Whitechapel come across as surprisingly samey.

Which makes me wonder whether, perhaps, they would have been wiser to spend a little longer on their second album rather than knocking it out so soon after the first; This Is Exile smacks of being a little hurried, not quite the finished article. The dead giveaway for me are the presence of three tracks – album opener “Father Of Lies”, “Possession” and “Death Becomes Him” - which end on fade outs. The latter covers it up with some weird noises and pitchshifted groans smeared over the tail end, but impression remains of songs that haven’t yet been drawn to a satisfactory conclusion. You can’t play a fade-out ending live, after all.

So This Is Exile shows more potential than it actually manages to provide. While threatening to stretch the borders of the stylistically conservative extreme metal sound, there’s a sensation that Whitechapel could have done a far better job if they’d spent longer doing it. Sure, you have to move fast to keep your head above water in the modern music industry, but you’re less likely to sink overall if you’ve got a raft of top-quality material to cling to – and This Is Exile is leakier than anything I’d ever want to set sail in.

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