Traces to Nowhere

Although Poland has had a metal underground for a long time, it isn't the first country that comes to mind when metalcore is being discussed. Think of mosh pits in Warsaw or Krakow, and the first thing that comes to mind is the country's death metal/black metal scene (which gets a lot of inspiration from the abundance of death metal and black metal units that have come out of the nearby Scandinavian countries). Metalcore has been a largely (although not exclusively) American phenomenon -- at least as of 2004 -- but metalcore is exactly what Poland's Sunrise provides on Traces to Nowhere, and they do it with conviction. This 2004 release is everything metalcore is known for being: harsh, angry, punishing, brutal, nasty and ferocious. Sunrise thrives on density, and for listeners, that means a very claustrophobic CD that offers little in the way of breathing room. While Traces to Nowhere is very much a part of metalcore, Sunrise indicates that they are quite knowledgeable of the hardcore that preceded metalcore -- these Poles don't sound like they heard Throwdown or Hatebreed for the first time in 2004 and suddenly jumped on the metalcore bandwagon. Actually, Sunrise was around long before 2004; the band goes back to 1994, and in Poland, they have a reputation for being a band that started out as basic hardcore but grew harsher and heavier as they went along and evolved into full-fledged metalcore. It's a direction they're obviously enjoying; Traces to Nowhere is consistently inspired even though it isn't the most original or distinctive CD in the world. Anyone who has listened to a lot of metalcore won't find Traces to Nowhere to be groundbreaking; nonetheless, it's a decent and noteworthy, if derivative, effort that is worth hearing if one has a taste for metalcore's hammer-to-the-skull ferocity.