There’s nothing unusual today in mixing fusion, hardcore and death metal in a rusty bowl until the point when everything is over boiled and tastes like shit. And, to be honest, the last effort from The Red Chord, “Clients”, released a couple of years ago was something like that. It was utterly unlistenable. Not for the faint of heart, the aggressive, chaotic and unfocused mishmash of ideas in “Clients” could indeed kill if it played to a very fragile old dude with a fear of noise. This time things look different though. The band really impresses with its passionate and enthused delivery of frantic vertigo of distorted sounds, well done time changes and some of the most brutal hardcore grunts known to the civilized world. There are also three or four more straightforward songs with greatly executed guitar solos, reminding of Death and even Atheist, but these comparisons are only schematic and should not be considered literally. Depending on what you’re looking for - whether it’s brutal numbers (“Intelligence Has Been Compromised”, “Midas Touch”) or experimental ones (“Tread on the Necks of Kings”, “Prey for Eyes”, “It Came from Over There”) - you can switch from track to track in the beginning, but in the end of the day you will be surprised with yourself falling in love with all the aspects of this album. Of course, “Prey for Eyes” is not a flawless release, but there are very few other bands in the genre that can compete with these death/mathcore surgeons. Let’s hope they will save this formula for the next record, too - only developing it, not overexpanding it with ambitions.