I just had it out with Unholy in Copious-Amounts-Of-Bare-Knuckle-Punching 101, and studies show that this NY crew fluent in the game of metallic hardcore just made their eat-drink-shit-sleep/punch-pound-slap-smash album. Bear essentials.

It took me about thirty-six minutes, and then a trip back to 2007, to realize New Life Behind Closed Eyes as Blood Of The Medusa Version 2+2: Elementary. Guitarist and Unholy founder, Jonathan Dennison (ex-Path Of Resistance), has in his past reached beyond the borders of New York tough-guy music and into Swedish spectrums in his string-play, just enough to find this faction as an open hand above a sea of sinking fists. I should know. As time goes on, I give less and less of it to the pulled pork that is hardcore-meets-heavy-metal. But these guys, they're ones to watch, even if their new giant is sleepy.

New Life is the common denominator of all things Unholy. You can hear the demise of their machismo's relationship with metallics, and instead feel the bastard birth of street justice from their machismo sexing even more machismo. Of course you would know none of this from the first few seconds of opening track, "Seeker Immortal," where the tight speed-picked crunch of high notes met with the rapid gunning of kicks and cymbal-catches suggest something more along the lines of ball-grabby power metal than the knuckle sandwich grasp that soon dominates this track and clutches the entire album, but if you spend enough time in their muck and mid-paced-ness (made even more a dirge with the grunt and growl of new vocalist, Billy Price), you'll find the kind of underlying sense of melody and above-par musicianship that took initiative way back when. Namely, the choruses in "Children Of Eternal Sleep" and the title track, the push, pull, shuffle of the instrumental track, "No Faith," and the all-encompassing breakdown that levels most others when it hits inside of "The Blinding Light." These are battles nicely fought, won, and shine even brighter than when they try to upset the set-up by pledging an allegiance to their thrashier side (think diet-Haunted) as they kick up lame fusses during "Into The Flesh Of Another" and "The Followers." But at the end of the day, Dennison's knack for a good riff here and there, and the drummer's not-heard-often-enough penchant for wrapping fills around all of these commonplace straight ahead themes, save this from what it almost became.

Love it or leave it, Unholy just wrote the soundtrack to concrete having a staring contest with brick.