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Emmure is back in 2011 with another bone crushing brutal album for their fans to listen to. Speaker Of The Dead is Emmure's 4th album release and features 15 tracks. Emmure has been evolving over the years adding little pieces of previous albums to every new album. You can see aspects of The Respect Issue shown in choice songs. Guitarists Jesse Keitve and Mike Mullholland use the whammy pedal in songs such as "Area 64-66" and "My Name Is Thanos." This allows Emmure to get those high pitch screeching notes that adds a haunting powerful effect to their style which is what we love. They also showed a little bit of something new on "A Voice From Below" that was groovy and didn't sound half bad. Another plus is lead singer Frankie Palmeri's vocals. He always delivers thundering lows and highs in every song that makes you wish you had his technique down.

The only way you will like this album is if you love Emmure unconditionally. Although it is a breathe of fresh air, in all honesty it is nothing special. Play it while you work, study or play Poker DE, sure, but if you are really listening to it purely for the sake of the music-- you might be a little disappointed. There are 15 tracks but only few of them top over 3 minutes which is a let down. Frankie Palmeri's delivery is like an atom bomb, but the lyrics are repetitive and not creative. Emmure is popular for their breakdowns but they get old after a while. Even if they do make you want to tear your room apart. Emmure needs to step it up and be less simplistic. For what they lack in technicalness they make up for with power and presence. I would be lying if I said I wasn't getting amped off almost every track and wanted to bump this as loud as I could.

8 string guitars are getting more popular with bands these days. I am a guitarist myself and I hear a very very low guitar in the last track "Word Of Intulo." I am no one to say there is a written way to play an 8 string, but there kind of is. The last track was the biggest disappointment of Speaker of The Dead. The track is a 1:12 breakdown that was a horrible way to end with. The thing is that I see foreshadowing. 8 strings are popular, if Emmure starts using 8 string guitars for their next album they cannot make songs that sound like "Word Of Intulo."

I love Emmure unconditionally and I expected them to make this quality of an album. I will keep playing Speaker Of The Dead along with all of their other albums. Its no Goodbye To The Gallows but I believe Emmures previous album Felony was better. Some days you just need the brute force of Emmure to make it through and none the less they do their job. Facing the facts, I give Speaker Of The Dead a 6/10.

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