Light The Torch impressed quite a bit with their 2018 album ‘Revival‘, making it sort of a massive statement as the reborn and renamed band formerly known as Devil You Know. With vocalist Howard Jones you can never go wrong and the more uplifting nature of the album resulted into some absolutely massive and highly catch tracks of which there were a couple that didn’t seem to stay off the air for too long at my country’s rock radio. So of course I was pretty damn excited when the announcement came that a second album was coming with ‘You Will Be The Death Of Me’ and was really hoping they would continue the path they had started on earlier.

And we can confirm that they very much did so and even bigger than before! With opening track ‘More Than Dreaming’ they make an immediate statement going full gear from the start. Driving drums by newly joined Alex Rüdinger (Whitechapel), engaging & driving riffs from the mind of Francesco Artusato (All Shall Perish, Hiss of Atrocities), rumbling bass lines from Ryan Wombacher (Bleeding Through) and refined touches of keyboards give Howard the best possible canvas to pain his soaring vocals onto. The headbang inducing start of the song will pull you into the record whether you want it or not and the overall catchiness and emotion packed lyrics will hold you there. Take a track like ‘Let Me Fall Apart’ and its “woo-ooo-ooh” bits shows a band that is ready for packed venues, the bigger the better. Elements like that makes you think of stadium fillers like 30 Seconds To Mars, while still maintaining a level of harshness with Howard‘s effortless screams bringing in much valued touches of variety.

While much of the themes and inspirations for the songs stem from places of darkness and difficulties encountered in life, Light The Torch is still very much a torchbearer for that empowering and uplifting kind of modern metalcore sound. Take ‘Wilting In The Light’ with its very recognizable melody, which doesn’t fail to conjure a big smile on my face time after time, forcing me to move along to the music and you’ll soon find yourself blaring along at the top of your longs with the chorus. Some songs take a somewhat softer approach like ‘Death Of Me’, ‘Become the Martyr’ and ‘I Hate Myself’, bringing a feeling of contemplation and melancholy. But all of that is easily balanced out with bangers like ‘Living With A Ghost’ and ‘Denying The Sin’ where Howard is exorcising some clear demons with his screams. But every single track has that same formula of absolutely epic and soaring choruses in which Howard brings the sound he’s so well known and much lauded for and craftily written music that blends brutal heaviness perfectly with all the hooks and melodies you’d ever want from them.

And that’s maybe the one point of criticism I’d want to point out. While as good as every track is food for my soul and absolutely kills it, the further you get in the well over 40 minute length of the album, it starts to sound a bit too much the same. That is to say that there is not a single track that I feel like skipping when listening to the album and I can see most of them getting a lot of air time on rock radios all over the world again. It just becomes maybe a slight bit too predictive. The cover ‘Sign Your Name’ kind of wakes you up a bit, it being a really fun rendition of the eighties classic by Terence Trent D’Arby, even though it feels a little out of place with the other impressive creations. That didn’t prevent me from singing along to it quite loudly though.

Light The Torch delivered yet again a massive album with ‘You Will Be The Death Of Me’, refining the sound they established on their debut under their new moniker. Howard Jones is without a doubt one of the greatest vocalists of the metal/metalcore scene and the musicians that fill out the rest of the band are all damn talented individuals who know how to write catchy and epic songs, of which some get to a level that I’d want to hear them blaring from the speakers in a stadium sized show. I would bet that they will steadily grow to become one of the more popular acts in their genre and I personally can’t wait to catch them live whenever life allows me to.

Release date: June 25, 2021
Label: Nuclear Blast
Tracklist:

1. More Than Dreaming
2. Let Me Fall Apart
3. End of the World
4. Wilting In The Light
5. Death Of Me
6. Living With A Ghost
7. Become the Martyr
8. Something Deep Inside
9. I Hate Myself
10. Denying The Sin
11. Come Back To The Quicksand
12. Sign Your Name

More online here:
https://www.facebook.com/LightTheTorchOfficial
https://twitter.com/lttorchband
https://www.instagram.com/lightthetorchband
https://www.youtube.com/lightthetorch
https://open.spotify.com/user/hfh88s1haqbgxgnaj4sbzrhmi