Unbodied: Unbodied (EP 2012)

They're from The Ohio

Ohio's Unbodied contacted me with a review copy of their self-titled debut EP. It has some gorgeous, colorful, psychedelic artwork that recalls some of John Dyer Baizley's best works, like Phantom Limb and Kvelertak. As anyone who's gone blind buying knows, cool cover art is a strong indicator that the music will be cool as well.

Their Bandcamp page has a grocery list of different genres name-dropped, but as the Baizley influence might suggest, their main influences are sludge and grind. They also have a little bit of metalcore in the sound, but really, doesn't every young band have that these days? And apparently, they don't even realize it, because that's about the only genre they don't use to describe their music. Thankfully, metalcore is not an overpowering influence.


The approach is spastic, grindy sludge metal with good drumming and hardcore/metalcore growling vocals. The production is a tad quiet, but the riffs are cool, and there's an awesome southern-inflected lead on closer "Damned and Void." The song quality on the five tracks is arranged in a reverse bell curve, with the best tracks opening and closing and the weakest in the middle.

Despite the fact that these guys are young, and I usually don't "get" younger bands, this is pretty good. I'm not crazy about the vocals, and they really get on my nerves the one time they go into clean metalcore style. But musically, this is pretty impressive.



The Verdict: Not bad at all. Unbodied probably won't appeal to you if you hate metalcore style vocals. But if you can get past that, the music is solid, and it might serve as a good bridge for Ohio kids to get into the better side of metal. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.