Horizons are a progressive hardcore metal band from Whitehaven in the Lake District. World renowned for it’s mixture of drama and beauty it seems the Lakes have rubbed off in Horizons’ music with crushing riffs and exquisite melodies. Wearing their influences like Killswitch Engage firmly and proudly on their sleeves, along with the aforementioned guitars the predominantly death growls are appropriately punctuated with cleaner emotional vocals just where they’re needed.

Their EP Worlds Among Us kicks off with their single/video song Hadley’s Hope and gets straight to business with a riff and melody trill that perfectly shows exactly what is to come. From there it doesn’t let up for the whole disc. First thing to note is the mix is excellent. All the main important elements are balanced perfectly and all perfectly clear. Bass drum has just the right balance of definition and thump, guitars are loud and heavy without getting in the way of everything else and vocals sit nicely on top of it all.

The rest of the songs follow the same perfect formula right through to the end all of the same quality as Hadley’s Hope.  The songs  flow so elegantly along there is not one transition which sounds even the tiniest bit clunky or tacked on. Delicate clean calm guitar sections simply appear then jump back into heavy riffing just when it feels right.

Worlds Among Us is such a solid EP there’s not much wrong that can be said about it. The only minor point is a handful of the lead parts either sound a little dry or might be a little too low in the mix. This is only really noticeable when casting a critical ear to it and would usually go unnoticed on a more casual listening. With so many lead parts interspersed amongst the record it’s amazing that they’ve managed to get so many absolutely perfect is a miracle in itself. Only other thing is the death vocals can be a bit unintelligible at times though this plagues most bands with death vocals to a much greater degree than here on Worlds Among Us.

It is apparent that each song as a whole has been carefully composed as a whole rather than just a collection of great riffs strung together. With so much well crafted music even in one EP this record will just get better with repeated plays. A great listen in your own home and I presume absolutely crushing live.

9/10