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

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