Aegaeon - Dissension

One of the most demanded bands for the opening spot on this year’s Summer Slaughter Tour was Aegaeon. I kept seeing this name and I had never heard of them; the one thing I knew for sure was that there HAD to be SOMETHING about these guys that grabbed SO many people’s attention and support. To my surprise (not really), Aegaeon is a fresh, new American…wait for it…deathcore band, what a surprise! The truth is that there isn’t anything unique about this band other than that they’re a lot heavier than your average deathcore band (like Oceano, Whitechapel, and Annotations of an Autopsy). In fact, there doesn’t really seem to be anything innovative or new in the music that Aegaeon brings anyway; it’s pretty much certain parts of other bands’ styles mashed together. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing…I would just like to see something a lot more impressive out of a band that appears to have a fairly big fan base. So if you’re looking for a new deathcore sound, don’t waste your time on this, check out some of the newer material that has been released by Veil of Maya, All Shall Perish, and Attila.

Aegaeon generally combines the DEEP growled vocals and ambient guitar sounds used during breakdowns that Whitechapel delivers with the crushing heaviness and brutal drum styles brought to you by Oceano. First off, there are already plenty of bands that have been doing this for years, so it’s not like they’re the first ones to combine those sounds (and I’m pretty sure they know that). If I had to come up with a logical explanation for them knowingly doing something plenty of bands have done before, it would be that they want to be the best and most successful at it. Sort of like if someone tried to knock Soulfly out of the spotlight by making music that sounded identical to theirs so that they could have all the fame and fortune instead of Soulfly.

The drummer is really good and has a lot of skill and creativity along with a buttload of potential, I’ll give him that. But there isn’t really anything out of the ordinary about the other members. The vocalist has a semi-unique growl that actually sounds pretty fucking demonic. I can’t even hear the bassist unless he’s slapping the bottom string during the breakdowns. And the guitarists aren’t anything special at all, they’re probably the worst musicians in the band; not because they suck (they don’t), but because they are the absolute definition of your generic deathcore guitarist.

There isn’t really anything else I’m going to say about this other than that this isn’t for the anti-generic music fan. If you’re a true deathcore fan like me, you might enjoy this a lot (I don’t really, but it’s good enough for me to listen to it every once in a while). Although not TOTALLY generic (definitely heavier than most deathcore groups), Aegaeon fail to make me understand why so many goddamn people love them so goddamn much. I would give this 9/20.