Starting in 2002, Canadians Shatterpoint released their first mini-CD “Consequences” in 2004. This six-song production received much praise and made Shatterpoint one of the most promising bands of Canada. Now, their first full-length album is ready and it promises to be one of the most dangerous and uncompromising albums ever.
Described to me as a thrash metal band with hardcore influences at first I thought: “how interesting is this ‘hardcore’ part actually? Surely it will bring down the quality of the album". So at first I was a bit reluctant to start listening to it. But how wrong could I ever be?

Very heavily influenced by bands like Shadows Fall, Monolith (USA) and Annihilator, Shatterpoint plays a combination of catchy thrash and stomping metalcore.
The sound is clean and all instruments are played very tight. The drums keep things interesting by making slight variations during the tracks while the guitars produce one crunching riff after another. What stands out most are the vocals. They can be divided into three different styles: quite good grunts during the (mostly metalcore) parts, a slightly distorted shout when the speed goes up again and a clean voice which reminded me very much of Annihilator.

The lyrics are mainly about inner struggle and paranoia/hatred towards others. Besides these individual skills, Shatterpoint masters the technique of writing coherent tracks and variation from track to track.
By the way, four tracks on this album are taken from the “Consequences” mini-CD, but they also fit well with this album.
The clean vocals are, however, the main drawback of this album. It tends to get too emotional and goes into wailing and sobbing now and then. Luckily this voice is not used very often, so the many good things about this album outweigh this negative aspect easily.

I’ve heard this kind of music many times before and “Dead Precedence” certainly has its flaws. However, the album definitely sounds good overall and is well worth checking out if you are interested in good thrash/metalcore.
Highlights of the `Dead Precedence`, are: “Torn Apart”, “Murder for Hire” and “Hate Trip”.