adg211288 Mark of the Beast: Indoctrination is a 2012 EP release by US metal act Sparrows. Sparrows have also released their first full-length album, Rivals of Christ, earlier in the year. Mark of the Beast: Indoctrination is intended to be the first of a three part series from the band.

The music on Mark of the Beast: Indoctrination has been promoted as a black metal release. While there are certainly black metal elements here, especially in the first two tracks, the EP as a whole takes on more of a dominate deathcore sound to my ears. Quite honestly the mix of styles doesn’t work here for Sparrows. They seem to be all about intense brutality which is of course fine for the style of metal they play but the trouble is the EP lacks substance. The majority of the vocals, while more than adequate for death or black metal styles alike, are of the incomprehensible ilk, making it difficult to identify with the songs lyrically. A word here and a word there is all I can really get. Many artists have employed this approach to great effect, allowing the vocals to become another instrument in their intense atmosphere but that doesn’t happen here for Sparrows, as the music doesn’t make up for it. The parts which do strike me as being noteworthy seem few and far between. Brainscan is the most accomplished track here but I’m still mostly hearing music that neither stands out within its genre or even as a solid example of it. There’s no identity in Sparrows’ music from the hordes of other bands playing this style and that’s especially a problem for me when I’ve always found the genre generally lacking compared to its non-core death metal cousins.

Mark of the Beast: Indoctrination is a barrage of extreme sounds and if that is what Sparrows were going for then as unimpressed as I find myself with the release then I have to concede that they succeeded, but they’re going to have to do a lot more to make something I’ll remember as a bit more than a load of sounds thrown together in the wrong way. I would be being unfair if I said that Mark of the Beast: Indoctrination numbered among the worst of the worst and that there are no redeeming elements to be found, but I have no desire to weed them out when the bulk of the EP doesn’t work for me.

25/100

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org/sparrows-mark-of-the-beast-indoctrination-t2749.html))