Sunrise - Cursed Not Alone

Alienacja’s Blades Shall Speak had some of the fiercest deathcore I’ve ever heard, so I had to find out more about its label. Evidently, Lifeline Records put out its first six releases at once last March. Not only that, each CD came in a beautiful three-panel digipak, with gorgeous, full-color booklets and top-spine obi strips.

How could the label afford this??? Having the owner do most of the artwork probably helped, and maybe prices are just lower in Poland (see Metal Mind’s recent spate of high-quality live DVD’s).

Lifeline #1 features Warsaw’s Sunrise, who existed from 1995-2006. Cursed Not Alone collects the band’s first two full-lengths, 1998’s Generation of Sleepwalkers and 2000’s Child of Eternity. The latter leads off this disc, and it’s cookie-cutter metalcore and Swedish melodeath. Even the band’s MySpace admits it was a mistake.

However, Generation is another story; it sounds like another band. The fact that Sunrise sounded so different in two years suggests that Child was the product of premeditation and not organic change. Whatever the case, Generation kicks ass. The raw production sounds like it’s gone through sweetening, with artificial sheen on the drums. The result sounds fine, though, and the performances are ferocious.

Stylistically, Generation is metalcore with touches of thrash (Slayer) and death metal (Carcass). While the overall approach is “core,” some of the metallic riffs are monstrous. The gruff vocals are an acquired taste, but they work. In fact, they scare me a little, in a “wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley” sort of way. Cursed Not Alone comes with three videos – a well-done music video and two promotional trailers (in Polish and English). This is a total package, folks, a real labor of love. You can find it at Interpunk.