Prepare Consume Proceed (SharpTone Records) is the latest EP from Liverpool UK’s Loathe. But it’s not really the latest as it’s a reissue of an EP of the same name that was released, brace yourselves, October of last year. Better yet, if you lose all the filler interlude bullshit and intro track you’re only really left with four songs or just shy of 16 minutes of music.

I’m assuming the decision to reissue Prepare Consume Proceed so hastily was because it would function as SharpTone Record’s coming out party. Yes, this EP serves as the tip of the spear for a label that was officially launched less than a month ago. The brainchild of Nuclear Blast CEO Markus Staiger and former Sumerian Records vice-president Shawn Keith, SharpTone was rolled out to the motto of: “A new era of music begins…” With a roster including such luminaries as Attila, We Came as Romans, and World War Me all SharpTone looks and sounds like to me is Sumerian Lite. It’s what crawled out of the Van’s Warped Tour primordial ooze.

But label confusion aside, I am tasked with reviewing this EP. It’s worth mentioning that I walked in totally cold as Loathe’s website and social media pages are more devoid of useful information than a Fox News broadcast. But if you must know the band is comprised of members with names such as, I shit you not, DRT, SNK, MWL, NIL and frontman DRK.

So we didn’t start on the right foot, but hey, I’ve still got the music. The artwork and logos recall Unsane and Godflesh’s astethic rather than anything else on their label, but push play and what you get is an amalgamation of Structures djent and Suicide Silence grade deathcore. Competent enough, but less than memorable extreme metal. ‘In Death’ and ‘Solace; in Soil’ have pummeling groove and decent rhythm changes, but everything else is straight out of the djent playbook. You still get your cold electronics to spruce up the palm-muted slabs of sound and the occasional sung hook.

It’s just hard to get excited for music this by-the-numbers when you have acts like Textures and Periphery exploring lots of interesting areas within the genre. And do me a favor, drop the stage costumes and pseudonyms, its less edgy and more infantilizing than you think.

4.0/10

HANSEL LOPEZ