Gideon - Costs

Gideon is the newest band on Facedown records. Their debut album Costs impressed Jason Dunn so much that he moved the band from Strike First to Facedown before the album's release. Early reviews have been postive but I'm a little torn.

As stated in my Wolves at the Gate review, the intro track in metalcore is overdone and pretty pointless. Costs starts with an intro that, while not adding the record, at least is a hardcore track with some vocals. Not necessary but not as pointless as some recent intros.

The first real song, Unworthy, is a split persoanlity song. A great heavy hardcore track, but when the clean vocals come in on the chorus it takes me surprise. The song is so heavy and almost a standard hardcore track that the melodic nature of the chorus with the clean vocals works both for and against the track.

False Profits is a melodic hardcore song that reminds me of Your Memorial's latest, Atonement. The album walks the line between melodic hardcore, deathcore, and just good old hardcore. Guycheck is a circlepit song with killer gang vocals. All the clean vocals are solid and they don't appear as the hook on every song, so it doesn't become monotonous as is normally the case.

The riffs aren't the great riffs you'll hear this year but they aren't offensive. Gideon isn't breaking the mold, but they are delivering a solid record. And yes, as a drummer and engineer, the drum production does bug me slightly. But my issue with sampled drums will probably also be a point of contention for a long while.

Everyone's complaint with Costs is the same; The album is too short. 9 songs coming in at 28 minutes flies by for a full-length and the album is enjoyable to the point that you wish there was more.

I don't know if Costs will have a place as album of the year but it has a place in my cd player as a hardcore record I enjoy.