Long Goodbye have quickly established themselves at the forefront of the UK’s throwback to early 2000s metalcore. By taking the genre’s most melodic and emotional period, yet emphasising its rawer, chaotic elements, they have crafted an interpretation that is still devastatingly heavy. On previous efforts, their roots in later developments of metalcore brought influences that many of their contemporaries lacked. A Whispered Promise of Failure sees them cut the fat from their sound, but in the process they lose some of the elements that made them stand out.
A Whispered Promise of Failure is based on the Poison the Well, 7 Angels 7 Plagues and early Cave In/Converge template of metallic hardcore. Those groups contrasted their chaotic and heavy elements with emo melodicism in the form of intricate, clean guitar sections, add3 power chords and harmonious octave leads.
Long Goodbye’s interpretation of this focuses more on the extremity than prettiness. Vocalist Patrick Morton’s false-cord high screams are far more throat-shredding than their forefathers’. Songs retain many of the louder, harmonious moments but avoid the clean ones. On their earlier records, the band incorporated the occasional section of clean singing, although that is nowhere to be found here. As a result, the EP has very little dynamics and their chaotic moments lack the impact of their influences. The exception is the closer, “Farewell from a Fading Transmission”, when softer moments do propel the heaviness.
The band’s most central comparison is not the late 1990s/early 2000s acts who popularised this style. Long Goodbye’s greater emphasis on duelling panic chords against harmony is more typical of the mid-2010s band Renounced. Those Londoners were lone wolves when they breathed new air into emo-metalcore, in a sea of punk-based hardcore and H8000-worshipping groups. It was only when they reached a wider audience towards the end of the decade that the sound became adopted by popularisers Cauldron.
The Renounced-influenced sound has become quite a phenomenon in the UK since the turn of the decade (unfortunately being called “revivalcore”), particularly on A Whispered Promise of Failure’s label The Coming Strife. With Dandelion and . Threefiftyseven’s short lifespans ending in 2024, Long Goodbye are already fronting its second generation. Alongside Killing Me Softly and Durendal, their late-2023-birthed crop did not originate from the hardcore scene that this movement now takes part in. In 2018, Morton and guitarist Jack Dunn had formed gloom metallers Creak, more involved with Loathe, Gutter and Alignment’s modern metalcore scene than “real” hardcore.
While in their latter years each occasionally played with mainline hardcore bands like World of Pleasure and Despize, audiences still treated them as outsiders of a separate social circle. It was only with the formation of Long Goodbye, Alignment’s members joining Durendal and Gutter’s name change to Killing Me Softly that the seams no longer showed.
Long Goodbye’s debut had retained moments of Loathe-esque riffing, particularly on “Autolisis”, but that has not continued to today. The only subtle reveal of their non-revival metalcore roots is on “Farewell From a Fading Transmission”. That track’s verse riffs jump from driving, low-string power chords to rhythmic accents on high strings, recalling the early work of Blood Youth and Create to Inspire.
Many of Long Goodbye’s breakdowns are groovier and more chromatic than what is conventional in emo-metalcore. Morton and guitarist Ryan Hubbard recently played in beatdowners Bloodfury, and Creak began life similarly as Cheapshot. Arriving in a time when UK hardcore is at its most mosh-centric, these breakdowns lean closer to the crushingly heavy dance parts in that style.
The other major strain of what has fallen victim to the “revivalcore” broad swath is the so-called “angel statue metalcore”, the new tongue-in-cheek name for rawer melodic death-inspired metalcore. Like many contemporaries playing their style, Long Goodbye’s early material had incorporated the occasional pedal-toned melodic metalcore riff. However, on A Whispered Promise of Failure, its sole appearance is a vague similarity in phrasing during the verses of opener “My Dearly Departed”. The rest of the EP sees the band polish their sound into a more faithful reinterpretation rather than an update.
On A Whispered Promise of Failure, Long Goodbye still blaze their emotional yet ferocious take on metalcore. However, in the process of heightening their aggression, they have lost their more compelling songwriting. Their incorporation of modern elements was amongst their most fascinating traits, a reminder of hardcore’s consuming of countless disparate scenes this decade. As these become increasingly obscured, Long Goodbye find themselves stuck as a good tribute rather than the great advancers they have the potential to be.