REVIEW: Shields - Death & Connection

After 8 long years, SHIELDS are back on the scene with the gut-wrenching Death & Connection - a testimonial to dearly departed guitarist George Christie as well as Joe Edwards and Samuel Kubrick Finney's struggles in the aftermath. Across 12 songs SHIELDS pull no punches in their lyricism and elevate the technical elements of metalcore, particularly in Alastair Wain's drums, while crafting a soundscape varying from thrash to the opera.

The first thing to note on Death & Connection is the amount of poetry throughout the album, starting with This Is Not A Dream, where Edwards screams at the subject about being left in the mud, with the themes of death across its 4:34 setting the scene for the discussions of George to come. Abuser changes the energy immediately, pushing the calm and spacy atmosphere away with force in exchange for a thrash metal track with impassioned screams and belches atop an unrelenting high tempo soundscape.

Kill is the taste of the rawness in the lyrics of Death & Connection, off the bat with “I’m gonna kill, kill kill/everything that I love” before a spoken section that admits to drink driving and the isolation of only having drinking buddies. Kill speaks on the side of sobriety that’s hard to admit - “the hardest part I thought was not drinking/the hardest part is life without drinking”, with the rest of Edward’s admissions coming in screams and clean vocals that feel as if they’ve come from the pit of his stomach. Kill is also where some of Wain’s drumming comes to the fore, wherein the second act bridge he is able to switch into an ISSUES-sounding hard hip hop fill section before swapping back into normative metalcore with ease.  

Parasite is where Death & Connection hits its stride, introducing gorgeous harmonies into its chorus and a choppy double-bass led drumline before hitting a pitched up guitar-harmony solo that builds the track's tension effectively. The screamed vocals come back in the outro to crescendo the track perfectly, then fades out and into the first feature of the album - Lacerate, with GRAPHIC NATURE's Harvey Freeman. The thrashy elements from before come back with a bang to serve the hardest end of metalcore as the subject is wished “nothing but misery.” The pre-breakdown goblin scream just about prepares for the face-scrunching breakdown at the midpoint of Lacerate: the segment is not 10 seconds long, but manages to have the anger of a minute- long hardcore piece. From here the track descends to chaos with the goblin vocals returning and another electronic infused breakdown with broken vocals and a half-tempo segment as the wish of misery is driven home before Lacerate’s hard stop - album highlight, no question.

Womb is a slowing of the pace in comparison, focusing more on layered chord progressions and clean vocals and swinging breakdowns instead of the all or nothing of the thrash and spoken word. In it’s lyrics SHIELDS promise “no more running” from the traumas of the last few years, though the elongated guitar reverb at the end makes Womb run a little longer than it needs to.

Brother’s Lament is the next spoken word section and the point in the album where tracks become more bluntly about George: a short poem about a true brother leaving the fold bathed in red and green placed atop ambient noise with a layer of distortion on the vocal to drive home the disconnectedness that often comes with heavy grief. They link this with the name to its follow up Red and Green, which mixes poetry with vocals as it details the haunting memories of George that Edwards lives in. Red and Green is as angry as it is sad, with lyrics detailing how heavy his loss was (“the weight of a lost brother bears down on my back as I suffer through the last few years”) and the feeling of being abandoned by god over the top of layered easycore sounds.

There’s a break for some chaos in wolfskin, featuring LEFT TO SUFFER’s Taylor Barber with dirty sliding riffs and the two vocalists trading screams before a gnarly thrash breakdown. The final interlude with reversed vocals called Loser. This interlude was the only element of Death & Connection that felt unnecessary, but at only 1:21 that can be artistic choice.

The final two tracks of Death & Connection are the most impactful; the title track is the penultimate, which starts full hardcore before moving into a beautiful classical guitar style solo as well as a feature from Wagnerian tenor Jonathan Finney in its final section. It’s striking to listen to: the contrast between the breakneck beginning to the midpoint lull before going into a black metal movement layered with Finney’s tenor.

Finally there is Miss Me, which strips itself back in a more country feeling track and lays bare the events of George’s funeral, including the members of SHIELDS carrying his coffin along with his father and son. Miss Me is like a machete to the abdomen, with its chorus begging to be missed and lyrics such as “chained together in agony/ I felt his weight on top of mine”. At this point the tears were pricking, but fell alongside Edwards’ by the end of Death & Connection as his voice breaks on the final note and the album closes with his sobs from the booth.

Death & Connection is a beautiful album to listen to in its drumlines, choppy riffs and perfectly executed tempo changes, but mostly in its honesty about grief and the places it takes us as humans. It pulls no punches without assigning blame, and the metalcore soundscapes perfectly cultivate the mix of sadness and anger that comes from the places Death & Connection were written from.

Rest in Peace George, you’re dearly missed.

Score: 8/10

Death & Connection was released on 30th January 2026 via Long Branch Records. Words: Julia Brunton

Photos: Shields