''Mark of the Blade'' is the sixth studio album by American

deathcore Deathcore is an extreme metal subgenre that combines death metal with metalcore. The genre consists of death metal guitar riffs, blast beats, and metalcore breakdowns. While there are some precursors to the concept of death metal fused with met ...

band

Whitechapel Whitechapel is a district in East London and the future administrative centre of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is a part of the East End of London, east of Charing Cross. Part of the historic county of Middlesex, the area formed ...

. It was released through

Metal Blade Records Metal Blade Records is an American independent record label founded by Brian Slagel in 1982. The US office for Metal Blade is located in Agoura Hills, California. It also has offices in Germany, Japan, Canada, and the UK. The label is distrib ...

on June 24, 2016 to mostly positive critical reception. It is the first Whitechapel album to feature lead vocalist Phil Bozeman performing clean vocals on an album, on the songs "Bring Me Home" and "Decennium", and it is the last album to feature drummer Ben Harclerode. A music video for the track "Elitist Ones" was released on June 24, 2016.

Critical reception

''Mark of the Blade'' was met with generally favorable reviews from critics. At Metacritic (a review aggregator site which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 from music critics), based on 6 critics, the album has received a score of 74/100, which indicates "Generally favorable reviews". At

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

, Thom Jurek wrote in a mostly positive that "In making a record that indulges so many of their songwriting obsessions, Whitechapel's ''The Mark of the Blade'' 'sic''might have been a mess. It's not. Sequence and flow, moods and styles, all form a coherent whole -- albeit one that might have used a tad more judicious editing. But it's hard to fault a band for trying new things, especially when what they deliver is an album with far more hits than misses." He also praised Mark Lewis' production on the album, and compared the closing track to

Tool A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates ba ...

and Slipknot. In a slightly less positive review for

Exclaim! ''Exclaim!'' is a Canadian music and entertainment publisher based in Toronto, which features in-depth coverage of new music across all genres with a special focus on Canadian and emerging artists. The monthly Exclaim! print magazine publishes 7 ...

, Denise Falzon described the album as "a bit hit-and-miss. Musically, the new touches work well and flow with the rest of the album, but the clean vocals in particular feel forced and sorely out of place."

Track listing

Personnel

;Whitechapel * Phil Bozeman – vocals * Ben Savage – lead guitar * Alex Wade – rhythm guitar * Zach Householder – third guitar * Gabe Crisp – bass * Ben Harclerode – drums ;Additional musicians * Ben Eller – guitar solo on "The Void", "Bring Me Home", "Tormented", "Dwell in the Shadows", "Venomous" ;Production * Mark Lewis – engineering, production, mixing * Whitechapel – production * Matt Brown – drum tech * James Thatcher – drum tech *

Jason Suecof Jason Suecof (born April 3, 1980) is an American record producer, audio engineer and guitarist best known for his work with heavy metal bands such as Trivium, Battlecross, Death Angel, All That Remains, Bury Your Dead, The Black Dahlia Murder, ...

– additional engineering (guitars) * John Douglass – digital editing ;Artwork and design * Colin Marks – artwork * Sean Cummings – art direction * Whitechapel – art direction

Charts

References

2016 albums Whitechapel (band) albums Metal Blade Records albums Albums produced by Mark Lewis (music producer) {{2010s-death-metal-album-stub