Norma Jean

Neck-snapping guitar riffs signal false metal's day of reckoning on Norma Jean's latest offering, The Anti Mother. Norma Jean have transcended the metalcore scene entirely with this epic monster. They've risen beyond their peers, and they're on the level that Underoath reached with Define the Great Line in 2006. Similar to Underoath, Norma Jean have now proven to the mainstream why they matter, by simply being themselves.

More than anything, The Anti Mother hearkens back to the sensual aggression of Deftones' first two offerings, Adrenaline and Around the Fur. The album's cuts are raw, melodic and extremely angry. So it's no surprise that Deftones frontman Chino Moreno pops up on "Surrender Your Sons." His tortured, but sensitive wail separated him from all of his peers in the late '90s, and it gave Deftones something none of their contemporaries had. In a familiar fashion, Norma Jean have completely divorced current heavy music standard conventions, and they've given droves of mallcore kids something worth playing on their MySpace pages.

Rather than just mixing hardcore and metal according to the current formula, Norma Jean dissect both genres and re-fashion the elements into a style all their own. "Discipline Your Daughters" experiments with an understated melody that's both catchy and fierce. Calculated, violent guitars and creepy electronics make "Robots 3, Humans 0" a cybernetic metal classic. Meanwhile "Vipers, Snakes and Actors" rips and roars with a primal power. Often the songs feel like a freight train about to de-rail, but they're so hypnotically violent that it's impossible to turn away.

"The Birth of the Anti Mother" and "The Death of the Anti Mother" are pure sonic warfare. Each chord crunch rings like a shotgun, and the lyrics bleed passion. During album closer, "And There Will Be a Swarm of Hornets," a choir sings as the guitars drone with ominous feedback and world-burning screams. Reckoning is here, and you've been warned.

—Rick Florino
08.06.08

Another Norma Jean album, another lineup change. This time, drummer Chris Raines steps in for the absent Daniel Davison, who exited the lineup in 2007 to pursue a career in visual art. Raines is a solid replacement, having honed his percussive thunder with Spitfire, and The Anti Mother offers up another batch of cathartic, pummeling metal. Although the bandmates still flaunt an ability to grind their audience's eardrums into powder, Norma Jean's hidden strength lies in their dedication to melody, which hides behind walls of sound and rears its head during key moments. "Self Employed Chemist" and "Robots 3 Humans 0" are prime examples, mixing distortion with melodic hooks and vocal harmonies. Norma Jean's members aren't softening in their old age; rather, they've learned to add variation to the metalcore pattern, injecting bursts of melody and offering cameo spots to members of the Deftones, Mighty Six Ninety, Saosin, Helmet, and others. The Anti Mother ultimately boasts the best of both worlds: heavy riffage with manic, tortured shrieking, and aggressive melodies sung with equal parts passion and grit. ~ Andrew Leahey, Rovi