Reviewed by Peter John Willoughby

Onward To Olympas are a metalcore band from North Carolina who are influenced by Between the Buried and He Is Legend. Since their formation in 2008, they have cultivated their sound, blending progressive metal, straight hardcore, and elements of death metal. Justin Gage (clean vocals and guitar) states "We like the challenge of including all the genres that we most enjoy without making a song sound like it is being performed by three different bands". The album was recorded with Jamie King (Between the Buried and Me, For Today) in order to bring out their intensity. The vocals are mainly metalcore screams by Kramer Lowe, but also feature gang vocals and clean singing. The guitar work is much more technical than I have come to expect from most hardcore/metalcore bands. Increasingly I find that bands tend to put their trademark songs at the start of an album and leave the more adventurous ones until the end. Yet again this means that the album only starts to get interesting in the last three tracks. There is an outstanding guitar solo and great interplay of screaming and clean vocals in "Presence At The Funeral". The lyrics in "The Lost Generation" are "I know you're mad at every possible thing/That's what gives you so much hate/I know we aren't all perfect in this world/But why have you chose to act like this/You think its right to be evil inside/But let me tell you something/Wake up you're not that tough". Finally, we have the title-track which has a lot clearer vocals "This world is not my home/I'm only here to share the message/This world is not my home/I live behind the gates" and also feature guest vocals by Taisha Beathea of Carson.

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