SONG REVIEW: Flowers For Hades - "Trigger Warning"
“Flowers of Hades makes a huge statement with their debut single ‘Trigger Warning’”
by Jesse Smith
Good art is supposed to invoke emotion, and if you’re a new band coming onto the scene you should make a statement and invoke whoever hears your music some emotion. In this case, Flowers of Hades has come out swinging with their debut single “Trigger Warning”. Flowers of Hades is a deathcore/metalcore band from New Zealand that has just stepped into the music scene and they came with a familiar brutal deathcore sound and they do it very well. Over the last decade, deathcore has gone through many phases and has even started to heavily blend with Metalcore and other genres like mainstream Rock. Flowers of Hades takes the sound back and brings brutality, speed and precision to the style of music and it truly has made me excited.
The song starts with sound clips of news talking about mass shootings, which we can all agree has been a pretty big issue in the USA homefront as well as the rest of the world. Already this, mixed with the artwork of a very realistic looking handgun, what resembles a flag behind the gun, and the font they chose is the font that you see in the war movies or flyers of politicians. At first I was ready for a hard stance on the topic even after the disclaimer on the lyric video, But the lyric content was more of the traditional deathcore brutal yet poetic lyrics. Let’s face it and say it out loud, Deathcore lyrics, although very unsettling at times, are also usually very well written and are very descriptive. As the music starts instead of running out of the gate, they build up suspense as the anchors are still talking about the atrocities that have happened and instead of following the most recent trends of who can be the heaviest and slowest, they decided to speed riff it out. It was a different type of energy they were giving, It made you heart race. You can tell there are metalcore roots in this band by how the verses sound. They are very bouncy and riffy and while still aggressive they have a little lighter feel behind them. Even so, the song never loses steam, lyrics like “The Devil carved your name in the bullet piercing through your face” is the descriptive nature I was talking about. While they don’t stand a political stance, they do have the lyrics “How much death do you need to figure out a remedy” which stood out to me. As you come to an end, you realize you actually haven’t heard them drop it like it’s hot yet. Sure enough, they saved us salivating like dogs before dinner before finally delivering the goods, but I’ll let you go listen to it for yourselves.
This band, especially the vocalist, shares a similar vibe and sound to Thy Art Is Murder in the Human Target era which I was a huge fan of. I truly thought this band was seasoned and had at least an EP and a couple singles or demos out already and was shocked that this was their first release as a band ever. The song already sets the identity for the band and I really hope they stay on this heavier fast paced aggressive deathcore track because that is what we need. As I said before, deathcore has had many phases, but this phase and sound was one of my favorites and I can’t wait to hear what it can evolve into from here.