Until September

Album Title: 
Of Hope And Faith
Release Date: 
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Label: 
Review Type: 

This German Metalcore sextet from the small village of Kevelaer (situated near the Dutch border, at about 25 km North of Venlo) was founded in September 2009 by singers Maik Krause and Christopher Küppers, guitarists Boris Smolorz and Jos Ingenpass, bassist Johannes van Berlo and drummer Thorsten Schad, and so prolific and well in-tune with each other were the youngsters, that by Spring 2010 they already self-released their debut EP My Last Seconds.

Recorded at dp Tone Records, the demo enabled the band to play some 50 shows (some of which on festivals such as Rodarock, Fight For Youth and Komm Na Huus) and sharing stages with the likes of His Statue Falls, Ready, Set, Fall, AYS, Deadlock, Vitja, and Belgian's own, The Setup, among many others. Somewhere during 2012 the band also released a single for their debut EP's track “A King A Slave”. In early 2013 the band again secluded itself in a studio to record 5 more songs, which they had mixed at Koln based Pitchblack Studios by Aljoscha Sieg, and subsequently mastered by Brian Hood at 456 Recordings. It resulted in a physical version of this very same digital EP being released (on a limited rotation of a mere 100 copies which have long since been sold out) being released in May 2013. October of that same year found the band announcing having signed a deal for the digital release of the EP through Acuity.music...which is how it eventually ended up with us.

The band's sound is characterised by a part technical and part melodic guitar play, and by the interplay between the singers, say screamers/ shouters, who alternate between ending each other's sentences and singing parts together. One exception can be cited in the EP's closing track “A Dedication”, where one of the two goes for a bit of spoken word and a couple of sentences of very clean singing, indeed! You can 'discover' some tracks off the new EP, in video form, on the homepage of the band's own (www.) untilseptember.de, and extra videos (for the EP's “About Dreams”, and for “A King, A Slave”) can be found in the 'Media' section, where you can also find a link to free downloads of the band's debut EP, as well as other demo and rare live recordings!

Meanwhile, the band came to the conclusion that guitarist Jos didn't share the other members' idea of how to proceed with the band, and therefore decided to part ways on reasonably amicable ways. He was since replaced by one Kilian Kemna. Wanna know something negative about this EP? With only 5 tracks and 17:47 of playing time...it is simply far too short! I sure hope the guys come up with a full-length next!

 

90/100