Aftershock - Through the Looking Glass (1999)For those who came up on metalcore after 2001, the name “Dutkiewicz” is synonymous with one of two things: Adam D. the Guitarist, and Adam D. the Producer. As a guitarist, he belongs to Killswitch Engage, arguably metalcore’s most successful band ever. He’s a charismatic presence on-stage and the founder and songwriter of the majority of KSE’s catalogue. As a producer, he had a hand in seemingly every metalcore album released in the decade following Killswitch’s breakthrough, and was instrumental in perfecting the “hard verses/melodic chorus” format and the “sound” of the genre. For better or worse, Adam Dutkiewicz is one of modern metalcore’s architects.
But before all the prestige, Adam D. founded and co-fronted the legendary Aftershock in Boston, Massachusetts with his brother, Tobias Dutkiewicz, together with future members of both Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall. They might be the perfect entry point for fans looking to journey into the past. Through the Looking Glass is the conclusion of a trail of EPs, splits, and one other full-length - Letters - which shows the band in a rough spot, just trying to finding their feet. Comparatively, its follow-up is a running leap, but it didn’t get much air: it was followed by a split, a compilation, and a live EP before the band called it quits. Tobias quietly stepped out of the picture, and Adam went on to bigger things. Were they better things? Up to you. No matter what, Aftershock’s existence is vital to what metalcore became. Apart from Killswitch Engage, their disbandment led Jonathan Donais and bassist Chris Fortin to join up with members of Overcast and an unproven Phil Labonte (later of All That Remains) to found Shadows Fall. Even with these credentials, Aftershock and Through the Looking Glass still fly way under the radar for too many genre fans. If you’re one of them, just be warned: this is a different beast from a different time, one when Adam D.’s and Joel Stroetzel’s thrash riffing over Tom Gomes’s punky drumwork was cutting-edge. The Swedish influence that would dominate the metalcore of the '00s can be felt at times, but it’s Slayer more than In Flames that informs Dutkiewicz and Donais’s fretwork, keeping things punchy, focused, and all-American. Of One Blood, The Art of Balance, Alive or Just Breathing, and Behind Silence and Solitude all mimic its successes to some extent, but they do not match it. Not remotely. This is due in large part to the fact that Aftershock have incredible tonal control for a bunch of newcomers (mostly teenagers at the time!), capable of arranging dense leads, chugs, blasts, breakdowns, and dreamy interludes in expressive, but always overpoweringly heavy ways. From essential opener “Prelude to Forever,” which charts all the ground the album will cover in a cool seven minutes, to late-album standout “Impenetrability,” the album is a metalcore tour-de-force like few others, especially for its time. The only clean singing on the album comes in the form of spoken-word, and most of it is confined to “My Own Invention,” a multipart behemoth that plays like a rough draft of Alive Or Just Breathing’s densest moments, with a finale that lands like a hammer to the jaw. What might have come from a follow-up is anyone’s guess, but Looking Glass’s death metal overtones (check out “Jabberwocky” and “Living Backwards” and tell me those leads couldn’t have been spliced straight from some '90s OSDM banger), coupled with the examples set forth by Somber Eyes to the Sky and Killswitch Engage, hint at what could have become Aftershock’s future. It’s tantalizing to speculate, but we have what we have - and all in all, this is a stellar album from one of metalcore’s better underground acts at their peak. Their willingness to experiment with structure and direction, not to mention their ability to write the hell out of an old-school metalcore riff, makes Through the Looking Glass a stunning curio of what the genre was shaping up to be: focused, melodic, adventurous, and most importantly, fun. -Brian L.
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