Artwork by: Paolo Girardi

Style: Deathcore, Technical Death Metal (Harsh Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Fit for an Autopsy, Job for a Cowboy, Cattle Decapitation
Country: Canada
Release date: 17 July 2026

---

By the time this review goes live, Shark Week will have ended. But that doesn’t mean we need to stop celebrating our Paleozoic pals anytime soon. Like the wolf or alligator, sharks have received a largely negative skew in our media, with films like Jaws and Two-Headed Shark Attack propagating the idea that these fascinating creatures are nothing more than unprovoked killers of Humanity. And while the Selachii Division does hold space for apex predators like the great white, mako, and hammerhead sharks, these are but a drop in the taxological bucket when it comes to the diversity—and general docility—of these majestic sea dogs.¹ Plus, if you think about it, mankind is like one big home invader; we wade into environs like the sea dragging all our hubris and uncouth arrogance in our wake, then want to act surprised when a creature who’s lived there forever gets mad that we’re thrashing around in their space and takes a nibble out of us. Not saying people deserve to get chomped on², but I think we could all stand to be a little more understanding and sympathetic to the creatures we share this Earth with.

I don’t know if Canadian five-piece Eaten By Sharks is wielding their power to spread Spielbergian fear or use the fearsomeness of sharks’ reputation as a means of penning lyrical retribution against a deserving mankind. Either way, they have chosen to wield the killing power of sharks in service of a direct and brutal whirlpool of technical death metal and deathcore. Not that land-lubbin’ symphonic shit either—this is all gills, no frills savagery built on frothing tremolo riffs, deep-sea chuggery, and blasting kitwork that could shake apart even the toughest shark cage. The Undertow of Hate is the fishy fanatics’ second LP, following 2022’s Eradication, and one can only wonder: do these relative newcomers have what it takes to swim in these crowded tech death seas? Or are they destined to become chum for a true apex predator?

Eaten By Sharks take to the waters in search of blood; no wasteful intro here, as “Vessels Torn” deploys an ear-catching slice of guitar that descends from adventurous to barbarous with all the creeping danger of a submersible entering the dark unknowns. From there on, the waters churn red with vicious mid-tempo death metal, content to bite down with thrashing riffs and toothy arpeggiated runs that, alongside drummer Justin Whitehead’s lockstep kitwork, create anchoring pockets of groove that are guaranteed to get all us vertebrates’ necks snapping. Matt Sherriff’s gnashing screams and barnacle-encrusted lows are delightfully legible across the album, making The Undertow of Hate a delight to scream along with. And, rather than favor the machine-gun vocals of fellow countrymen in Archspire or the compositionally-fragmented attacks of many a deathcore band, Sheriff allows himself to settle into the instrumental grooves created by his bandmates, operating like a synchronized shoal of fish, rather than a pack of lone hunters forced to cooperate. This combination of legibility and melody supplies The Undertow of Hate with a sizable tackle box of fishhook verses and choruses that, after a few listens, sank their barbs into my mind (“Capsized”, “Treading Water”, “Crimson Tide”).

Despite the band name and album title, Eaten By Sharks never feel driven wholly by a gimmick, nor is there a creeping sense of meme-ness to the music that can bleed out the enjoyment of repeated exposure (unlike, say, Dethklok). The Undertow of Hate never feels like a joke, to be enjoyed by a smirking caste of irony-poisoned listeners who are only here for the lolz of it all and who otherwise find all this death metal the stuff of bottom-feeders. That’s not to say Eaten By Sharks have constructed some high-brow masterpiece along the lines of a Liminal Rites (Kardashev) or Woe (An Abstract Illusion); this is an album with track titles like “Becoming Chum”, after all. But never does the band feel like they’ve gone “we don’t need to really try too hard because all this is very dumb and silly.” Like the mollusk-themed oeuvre of fellow death metallers Slugdge, The Undertow of Hate lurks nicely in that space where one can recognize the inherent absurdity of such extreme music while also enjoying it in a serious context separate from the need to be in on a joke.

That said, Eaten By Sharks are not reinventing any wheels here. Nothing across The Undertow of Hate’s sleek thirty-four minute runtime will shock or surprise genre aficionados or even casual listeners. However, much in the way sharks have maintained their current iterations for the last hundred-million years or so, sometimes what works is enough. Eaten By Sharks showcase that by focusing on solid compositional work, tight instrumentation, and vocals that’ll have everyone joining in on the frenzy. So, while The Undertow of Hate doesn’t necessarily challenge the biggest bois in the ocean, Eaten By Sharks can hold their dorsal fins high knowing they’ve produced something just as good: a reliable and fun record that should have no trouble finding its way upstream into listeners’ playlists.

---

Recommended tracks: In Tidal Chaos, Capsized, Crimson Tide
You may also like: Spire of Lazarus, Cognitive, Devil’s Reef
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: CDN Records

Eaten By Sharks is:
– Tyler Abrams (bass)
– Justin Whitehead (drums)
– Chris Chaperon (lead guitars)
– Dan Oko (rhythm guitars)
– Matt Sherriff (vocals)

1. An old nickname for sharks used by sailors. ↩︎
2. Okay, there’s a few people who deserve it. Billionaires, for starters… ↩︎