God Forbid – Gone Forever – Review

God Forbid

Gone Forever (Century Media)
By Martin Popoff

In the two and a half years since God Forbid‘s Determination icebreaker, the melodic metalcore moshpail has expanded by about 20 credible bands. Thankfully, New Jersey’s finest bionic pioneers kick, scratch, and claw against becoming obsolete. Sure, they keep it conservative (resentment at the band’s modest success and less modest hype should be kept in check), brush-stroking all the necessary fields (In Flames riffs, roaring and singing, artful twin leads, breakdown-vibed grooves, tom-toms), but God Forbid manage to hold one of the front positions simply by writin’ good and recordin’ good. Produced by little-known Eric Rachel and mixed by Colin Richardson, Gone Forever is a plush, hi-fidelity feat of modern metal, epic often despite short tracks (and a short running time of 41 minutes), high art born from strife, for indeed, the band was in danger of breaking up throughout the record’s birth as well as all the crap touring through Dante’s rings of hell a band this heavy has to endure.

Gone Forever feels confidently like the work of metal seers, only perhaps Lamb of God giving one this sense of a hard and hectic metal future to come. Fueling that exchange of confidence between noisemaker and fan, both bands are seers with a textbook knowledge of metal’s past. Geek note: The release of Gone Forever was prefaced by the Better Days EP, five tracks, of which only the power-nü-speed hybrid of the title track would surface on the album proper.
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