Album Spotlight: Hot Damn! By Every Time I Die

By Ryan Germ
 For a guy who changed his Instagram handle to “everytimeiry” I sure haven’t talked about this band on here, like at all. But to quote one of my favorite movies in Tenacious D In The Pick Of Destiny “I fucking love this band they’re the best band ever, period. Ladies and gentlemen, Every Time I Die”. I had a plethora of records to choose from because they really never missed, but I think my favorite is Hot Damn. And oh my god would you look at that?! That’s exactly the record we’re reviewing today. So without further ado, let’s jump into this god tier record.

The opener, Romeo A Go-Go starts off fast as fuck with a quick fill into a frantic beat over equally frantic vocals from Keith over a hard riff with this mildly southern twang. Around 30 seconds it goes into this fast blast beat before slowing down to the first chugging breakdown over these kinda rough clean vocals. The drums go into a roll which signals a 2 step part that gets interspersed with blast beats. The track switches to a slow bit which is lead by the drums and bass before going into a pretty moshy part. At around 1:37 it switches to the real breakdown which is a lot slower than the first mosh part towards the beginning. It then goes into a 2 step part before going into just the guitar which fakes you out into believing there will be a super hard breakdown before going into a fast part. It does the chugging lead in again after that fast part, this time culminating in a 5 second long breakdown to end the track.

Off Broadway is the next song which again, opens with a frantic riff before Keith’s vocals come in and the drums do as well with this stompy rhythm. The drums then slow into this even moshier rhythm with the riff getting even more southern metal sounding before transitioning into this super hard 2 step part. It then goes into a breakdown with Keith’s cleans over the slow twang-y sounding guitars. It goes into another 2 step part with some panic chords added for some flavor. The drums then have this odd rhythm over just bass that somehow follows Keith’s vocal style perfectly and it really shows off their Mathcore roots that’s demonstrated on their debut, Last Night In Town, before going back to the well with that last 2 step part coming back into the fray. It then goes into this very disjointed (complimentary) part with every instrument doing their own thing which keeps building to a stompy yet hard breakdown over Keith’s almost maniacal screams of “tonight we dance, for tomorrow they release the dogs”. Everything but the drums and Keith’s vocals cut out with Keith now screaming “1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3,/Keep it up/1, 2, 3” and the drums are perfectly on time with Keith’s cadence. The guitars and bass comes back in with it extra slow and moshy to end the track.

The next song, I Been Gone A Long Time, is an absolute masterclass in songwriting. Like, I would get this as a chest piece like it’s the meme of the Skillet one, but it’d be infinitely cooler because it’s ETID. The track begins with an absolutely tasty, southern, rock n roll riff over Keith’s screams. Keith drops one of my favorite lines in any song ever “She sure as hell ain't you/But Lord knows she'll have to do/She don't know I'm alive but neither do I/So there's nothing left to lose”, absolute bar. It then slows to this kind of bridge-y part with some of Keith’s cleans before speeding up back to the tempo of the main verse. The next part relies less on leads only going with tiny licks. It then slows back down to a moshy bit before entering the next verse with the main riff. It goes back to the bridge-y type of riff, it then speeds up and builds into a side to side part with a fucking cowbell. It then explodes into this giant sounding 2 step part which continues for 45 seconds, the track ending by fading out on the mosh part.

The next song, Godspeed Us To Sea, starts with a lick before transitioning into this fast part. After 30-ish seconds some rapid panic chords signal a tempo change and a moshy breakdown, which itself transitions into a quick 2 step part. The panic chords persist throughout everything I previously mentioned in that last sentence. Everything cuts out before going into another 2 step part which transitions back into a fast part. It then goes into this staggering rhythm and then it seamlessly morphs into this experimental sounding slow part which is hard to describe. It then goes back to the intro type of fast part if that makes sense. The track then goes into a mosh part before we go back to basics with, you guessed it, the intro fast part again. The panic chords return for one last breakdown to end the track.

The next track, She’s My Rushmore, starts off super fast with the signature frantic pace ETID presents on this record. It then goes into a small blast beat portion before going to the intro rhythm again. It slows down tempo wise until it turns into a full blown breakdown. It returns to the blast beat part before slowing yet again over Keith’s frantic yelps of “trust me”. It then cuts out to just drums and bass over some of Keith’s cleans with some compressed sounding effects over his voice. The track then speeds up for a short time before Keith calls out with the line “He shines his grace on everyone” and the track explodes into one last ferocious breakdown over the line “the greatest lovers were murderers first” repeating to end the track.

The next track is Floater and this has panic chords and tempo changes galore. The track is very well produced because the drums coupled with the panic chords sound like a punch in the face. After the intro bit it goes into this stompy yet frantic breakdown, which transitions into a 2 step part (now without panic chords in the riff, just pure fury). The track goes back to that stompiness and with that, the panic chords as well. It then goes into a 2 step part again with the panic chords before it all kind of slows down. The first “drag the lake” breakdown comes off and it’s so fucking hard. When talking about panic chords in modern HC and metalcore people shout out Disembodied, On Broken Wings, and now that they’re an old band (despite them coming around a decade later), Code Orange too. But this track shows ETID was on that shit alongside those acts. The track then speeds into another 2 step part (take a shot everytime I say that, just kidding you’d probably have liver failure) before going into a side to side which conducts the track into another breakdown. It speeds up into a stop and start part before the track seemingly ends with fills, climatic cymbal hits, the whole 9 yards really. Before exploding into the heaviest breakdown of their whole discography. Its slow, heavy, filled to the brim with panic chords, and made for crowdkilling. Fuckin beautiful. This is the song I show to my xWindbreaker Mosh Homiesx to get them hooked on ETID. It’s a classic.

The next track “In the Event That Everything Should Go Terribly Wrong” is an interlude. Here at Shadowtalkers you already know I love to gloss over interludes, but I enjoy this one enough to give a couple sentences about it. It’s kind of like that one meme of SpongeBob ascending with the headphones in his nonexistent ears. It’s atmospheric, Keith’s vocals are weirdly hypnotic. It’s good but there’s not much to say about it.

The next track Ebolarama, however, I do have a lot to say about. It starts off with a catchy ass riff, over some pretty clean vocals by Keith. It has this dancy yet frantic rhythm. After the intro it goes into a 2 step part, after that the rhythm kind of staggers before going into a breakdown. After that it goes into a fast part on mainly just the drums before everything comes in with some underlying claps and it sounds very groovy to be honest. It goes back to that staggering rhythm before going into the next breakdown. It then goes into this semi dancy part on the drums before it goes into a 2 step part. It kinda halts on the drums to that staggering tempo, and then the fill into the final breakdown brings it home over Keith’s scream of the lyrics “this is a rock n roll takeover”, the breakdown continues for a bit before the track ends. 

The penultimate track is Hit Of The Search Party. It starts off very fast before it goes into a slow moshy rhythm after each of Keith’s lines. It sounds like carefully controlled chaos. It then transitions into this frantic riff which signals a stompy mosh part followed up immediately by a 2 step part. After that 2 step part, you guessed it, were back to another stompy mosh part. But that slowly morphs into its own 2 step part which is a great touch to add to the track. After a fill it goes into a different 2 step part which is filled with more chugs. It then goes into an admittedly stereotypical 00’s metalcore fast part. It then rectifies that with a chaotic mosh part which goes into its own 2 step part. The riff almost sounds like some TDEP shit here. It then progresses with heavier and heavier chugs before culminating into its big mosh part to end the track.

The final song is Pornogratherapy and it starts off with this crazy mathcore riff with chugs, panic chords, and southern licks. After the riff it goes to this part that’s not a side to side on the toms and without any guitar. It just has Keith’s vocals and he’s very off key but it’s great. The guitars come in and it’s insane. Again I must reiterate, it’s controlled chaos at its peak form. Not peak craziness like Calculating Infinity TDEP or hell, even Last Night In Town ETID but still crazy. The clean and harsh vox are dueling each other. Feedback begins to build but then it goes into the next segment of the track and it’s a great mathy bit on the ride. It then goes into a 2 step part before slowing into a moshy bit. Please help, I can barely keep up with writing all this. Keith has another clean segment over a breakdown and it’s wayyyy better than the one earlier in the song. The track then gets to this side to side part with just the guitar before it goes frantic and it’s insane. It’s less of a side to side before the breakdown, more like the calm before a wall of death, thats what I picture happening in this track. It goes into another 2 step part with some licks in the background. The track ends with a crazy breakdown with a lot of feedback and this building feeling to end the record.

10/10 record. There’s not one bad song. I NEVER assign grafes to shit I spotlight, it’s more like “if I enjoy it I’ll spotlight it”. But this, THIS is a proper metalcore record. Despite ETID being affiliated with that lame ass emo pop scene due to collaborations with Gerard Way and Brandan Urie and their many shows with MCR and the likes, they’ve always been real. Every modern metalcore band needs to go back to this record and take notes, enough beatdown and that shit, more stuff like this. God I love ETID.