Album review: InVisions – Deadlock

Sometimes the willingness to get out there and make it happen is everything. It’s a quality that York-born metalcore crew InVisions have exhibited right from their beginning, storming into the studio to lay down their first single Unbreakable within a week of formation in 2016 and not stopping to look back. 2017’s debut Never Nothing and 2019 follow-up Between You & Me rounded out a frantic first three years, fastening a reputation for skull-caving brutality, fret-bending virtuosity and heart-lifting melody that would see them take the stage at Download and hit the road in Europe.

Then lockdown happened. Where for so many outfits of the ‘if we don’t slow down, we can’t be stopped’ mindset the past two years proved fatal, InVisions’ enforced hiatus only drove them to supercharge their sound. Stripping their long-redlined metal machine to its constituent parts, Deadlock sees them subtly sharpen and recalibrate, adding polish and a heightened focus on melody and emotion – from bludgeoning opener The 6 6 9 to cataclysmic closer Fall With Me – for what feels like this band’s definitive iteration. High octane. All cylinders firing.

At points, that’s manifested in surging, anthemic songwriting. The massive Annihilist, for instance, and expansive highlights Half Life and Hindsight, feel akin to While She Sleeps or Architects at their most honed – with Ben Ville’s vocal delivery often strikingly reminiscent of Sam Carter’s. At others, it is evident in more intricate and ambitious lyricism, such as the two-part, double-sided study of addiction on D V P E and D E A L E R. Hell, we even get a smattering of fast-spit sections that border on the aggro rap-core of Attila.

Ultimately, with metalcore as absurdly overcrowded as it has been for some time, even this excellent evolution needs a little more spark and originality for InVisions to hang with the genre’s biggest hitters. Taken on its own unbending terms, however, Deadlock does (rough) justice to one of the UK’s hardest-working bands.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Architects, Beartooth, While She Sleeps

Deadlock is out now

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