"What does metalcore from Belgium sound like?" you probably often ask yourself. As it turns out, it sounds a lot like metalcore from everywhere else around the world. Here Essence lay down five tracks with huge grooves (I'm talking monsters) and tons of the staccato double-bass jittery work that genre fans love and everyone else gets frustrated by. There is no clean vocals or keyboards to be heard here, thankfully, the band opting for a more brutal approach; every time you brace yourself because some asshole is going to start crooning, it just never happens, and I love Essence for that. The touches like the acoustic break in opener "Submerged" actually are there for a reason (remember reason, metalcore?), the melodies in "Defiance" work in a not-obvious way, and the tech noodling in cuts like "Recovery" actually sound good.

So, damn, everything's in place, but the band is struggling to take it to the next level and carve their own niche in the genre. If they drop a Norma Jean or Dillinger Escape Plan and do something unexpected, this could be a metalcore band worth getting to know; as is, man, every time I listen to this I like it a bit more, but there's just not enough personality here to make me love it, and I'm always one quick-double-bass-led Meshuggah groove away from just giving up. Essence have it in them to make a huge metalcore album next time out if they can just add something new to the mix; let's see if they rise to the task.