Your Demise
The Golden Age
Visible Noise
26 March 2012

What they’re saying:
Your Demise’s star has been in the ascendent for some time now, with the impetus created by their Download 2010 performance matched by that of their third studio record (and first with current vocalist, Ed McRae), 2010′s The Kids We Used To Be. Since then, the band have continued to grow the groundswell of support behind them, all the while looking as if their next album would be the one to really push them over the top. That might be why the band decided on You Me At Six’s producer, Matt O’Grady, to produce The Golden Age – to give it that extra bit of oomph and polish. Your Demise’s frontman, Ed McRae, described the recording process thus:

“The Golden Age is the most accurate depiction ever of who we are as a band and as people. If we could have written an album like this from the beginning then we would have. And recording it was very smooth – it all happened very quickly because we’re now better at integrating all our influences.”

Watch the video to ‘Forget About Me’, the first single from The Golden Age:

The other thing we know about The Golden Age is the quite-frankly enormous roster of guest musicians on it. The album is set to  feature contributions from letlive.’s Jason Butler, David Wood from Down To Nothing and Terror, Theo Kindynis from Last Witness, Ajay Jones from Brutality Will Prevail, Louis from Breaking Point, Dannika Webber from Evarose, and Josh Franceschi from You Me At Six. That’s more guest musicians on The Golden Age than most hardcore albums have musicians total. Ed McRae’s had a few words to say about them, too:

“Those guest spots weren’t written with anyone in mind, we just wanted our friends on the record. We love sharing what we’re doing with them. We’re still down with hardcore bands, and they want to be on our record, but then Josh [Franceschi] is in a ridiculously big band and he wants to be on our record too. It shows that no matter what you do you still have friends.”

Thrash Hits verdict:
Your Demise had a bit of a huff at us back in October when we said they weren’t “exactly the most spectacular of bands but they do Unspectacular really, really well”. A backhanded compliment, but we still think it still stands today – Your Demise aren’t reinventing the wheel, and to be honest, we’re glad of that. What Your Demise do – and what they’ve been doing really very well indeed since Ed McRae took over on vocals – is produce some of the biggest, heftiest chunks of melodic metallic hardcore the UK’s produced in the last five years. We look at The Kids We Used To Be as the foundation that Your Demise are building on; we expect The Golden Age to build upon that – not tear it down and start again. The taster of the album we’ve heard so far suggests they’ve done just that – the riffs sound meatier, the hooks are sharper, and we can already hear the call-back in ‘Forget About Me’ ringing in our ears.

Guitar solo potential: 2/6