REVIEW: This is Me Breathing - Serenity in Suffering [2026]
Artist: This is Me Breathing
Album: Serenity in Suffering
A lot of you reading this will probably remember a time not that long ago where deathcore was almost unanimously looked down on—and for the most part, was considered a bad word. While its hard to pin down the exact timeframe, I’d argue it was between 2013 and 2018—the “MySpace” deathcore era had officially come to a close, and off-shoots of the genre were booming (downtempo, “slamming deathcore,” you get it). It was a while before things started to get interesting again, with the single biggest resurgence of interest into the genre being the “revival” phase we’re currently in the midst of. I’m choosing to preface with this because, for the most part, I think we’re out of the whole “deathcore” being an instant and almost Pavlovian negative stimulus attached to a given artist—but sometimes, that association holds true, and unfortunately, the 2026 LP by deathcore syndicate This is Me Breathing is one of those times. While the individual elements of Serenity in Suffering are sound, the finished product feels like a careless medley of bland and tired tropes tossed in a crockpot, set to simmer and forgotten about until shape, form and taste have fallen by the wayside and all that’s left is a sloppy, haphazard amalgam.
This is Me Breathing aren’t a bad band by virtue of their instrumentation or musicianship—on paper, Serenity in Suffering checks all the boxes: blast beats, big breakdowns, grooves—you name it. Where things fall apart for the band is with composition. On Serenity in Suffering’s best songs, everything is predictable and flat—and on the worst songs, things feel thrown together without regard for flow or pacing. Introductory track, “Return to None,” is an example of the former: somber opening guitar pangs fade into momentum-building groove (that never really picks up momentum), launching into some fast drums with faster vocals before lurching into a stuttering breakdown that burns out into feedback. None of these individual sections are bad, and reading through it, one can nod their head and think to themselves, “yep, this is a deathcore blueprint for sure.” But the kicker never comes—the substance isn’t substantive enough to hold attention or demand a second spin, as it barely manages to keep the listener awake (let alone enthused) through its first play through.
And this is as good as it gets on Serenity in Suffering.
Other songs, for example “First Degree” or “Resolute Desolution,” are much more sub-standard cuts. On the former, the listener is bombarded by everything from a bizarre mid-range shout to a strained, end-of-the-record slam while the phrase “dead fucking meat” continues to slap against the listener’s ears like…well, dead meat. The latter is a moderate and melodic cut that misses the goal of ethereal and atmospheric and instead just lands as dull, with different iterations of the same choppy breakdown ebbing and flowing throughout what is thankfully one of the shorter cuts on Serenity in Suffering. “Golgatha” [sic], a track that starts with promise—a peppy drum intro that launches into a quick, pummeling groove—quickly veers off the rails with overblown vocal gimmicks and symphonic elements that fail at instilling atmosphere and awe, and only really end up sounding awful—making the listener they were actually at Golgotha getting crucified instead of subjecting themselves to the misspelled namesake put forth by This is Me Breathing. Unfortunately, these haphazard arrivals of misplaced elements continues to appear; it is all too often the listener is bombarded by a helter-skelter groove or random closed-hi-hat-mosh part and forced to ask why they’re hearing it.
I take no pleasure in the harsh criticism offered to Serenity in Suffering—it isn’t personal and it isn’t ill-intentioned—but it should say something that someone who is as unabashedly fond of even deathcore’s most meat-headed and ham-handed stylings can find very little to enjoy on the latest from This is Me Breathing. The good—decent production and rare moments of redeeming heaviness—are immensely outweighed by the bad, essentially totally drowned out in song structures, themes and compositions that are at best cliched and at worst totally devoid of thought. While there may be serenity in suffering, there was very little serenity I could find in suffering through this release.
3.5/10
For Fans Of: Crown Magnetar, Whitechapel, Lorna Shore
By: Connor Welsh