Cane Hill a piece of me i never let you find.

Louisiana's own Cane Hill, yes that Cane Hill, is back with their third full-length album, a piece of me i never let you find. The nu-metalcore band has been releasing and teasing singles over the past few years in anticipation of APOMINLYF. So what does a band that plays openers for WWE events sound like these days? Stick with me for a minute.

Flipping through parts of Cane Hill's backlog sounds like listening to satellite radio's "Best New Metal" station. Old singles from their first full-length, like "It Follows" or “Lord of Flies”, sound straight out of a Coal Chamber EP, while songs like "Kill the Sun" dial back the intensity for acoustic guitars, crooned vocals, and chill beats. "Blood & Honey", another semi-recent single, sounds like a Breaking Benjamin B-side. All this to say, APOMINLYF is another chapter in the confusing, slightly intriguing, discography that is Cane Hill's. 

This is an album of singles - the band has released four now from it - with downbeat, ethereal interludes every few songs to space the intensity out. Huge, chunky, cave-your-head-in riffs over lots of delay, squeals, and electronic beats are sandwiched between frontman Elijah Witt's haunting clean vocals. It feels weird to say a metal band's best instrument is its lead singer's clean pipes, but the catchiness of Witt's singing voice during the choruses hits right when it does. 

Lead tune "The Midnight Sun" launches right into plodding guitars before Witt and company swap in electro-snippets and screamed vocals over heavy breakdowns. Same with "Ecstasy in Grief" - unhinged aggressiveness, bass drops, and a breakdown counter that might hit the double digits all lead the way. Lead guitarist and backup vocalist Elijah James Barnett does a lot of heavy lifting in Cane Hill, with his gruff roar adding a nice balance to Witt's voice. You're either going to dig "The Midnight Sun" or discard it as an Emmure-rip off - if you don't, then there won't be much on APOYINLYF that will tickle your fancy.

Other singles "Ecstasy in Grief", "Permanence in Sleep", "Finding Euphoria" all follow a similar formula - big guitars and drums, clean vocal chorus where the song title is mentioned, brief bridge where everything slows down, chorus again, rinse and repeat for three to four minutes. "I Always Knew We Were Doomed" and "Fade" switch it up a bit, dropping the screams for mostly clean, whispered vocals. 

Bottom Line: Cane Hill's latest album, a piece of me i never let you find., is a quick dopamine hit for the TikTok metal scene.  Nu-metalcore candy the equivalent of Fruit Stripe bubble gum (yea, you remember the one with the zebra on the front) where the flavor fades after a few minutes. How much staying power does an album like this have? That'll be up to the kids to decide.