First of all, a bit of credit to Memphis May Fire—it takes some real headstrong gumption to keep peddling your painfully outmoded metalcore, fully aware of the fact that no one wants it. Like, they have to know, right? After Broken got slated in 2018 and people finally seemed to wake up to how awful this band is (better late than never), the demand seems to be less than ever. Maybe that’s why 2022’s Remade In Misery dropped with eight pre-release singles, and why this album has been given the exact same treatment. Flooding the market and making yourself inescapable was probably a canny tactic in Memphis May Fire’s generation of metalcore about a decade ago. It’s why there were so many nothing bands that have mercifully been culled in the intervening years.
Sadly, Memphis May Fire were not among those to be put out of their misery. They should’ve been; it would’ve been good for them to quit while they were somehow ahead. If they had, the scene would be safer from floundering wrecks like Shapeshifter. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, a Memphis May Fire album, which makes the irony of that title verge on nuclear-grade. Imagine an album from this band that could realistically be described as ‘shapeshifting’, when they can barely be bothered to put the effort in to pretend they have a reason to exist.
The silver lining is how, just like Remade In Misery’s Blood & Water, the best song is nice and accessible, being right at the start. It’s an uncharacteristically switched-on note that Chaotic begins things with, a catchy song packing some bounce and kineticism and—gasp!—groove. As entry-level as that sounds, it’s like finding the Ark of the Covenant for a Memphis May Fire album, and there’s little investment needed when you’ll inevitably dip straight afterwards. For Shapeshifter’s remainder, any concept of imagination or creativity or drive from the basest fucking idea undergoes some expeditious puttering out. What’s left is a moribund ‘update’ of the Memphis May Fire sound, where miked-dry Wage War-isms are grafted onto their usual insipid, amorphous ‘heavy’ to little avail. It’s just that difficult to escape how dated Memphis May Fire’s primary impulses are, especially when songs like Infection and Overdose remain locked into breakdown-core frameworks that have been gathering dust since…god, probably the last Memphis May Fire album.
Evidently, not a single soul involved with this album brought an idea to the table, let alone an original one. Even a tiny portion of the way through, it’s so boring and predictable to endure, as Memphis May Fire’s lack of inspiration couldn’t be more blatant. The old-fashioned, chug-a-lug guitars are back in earnest, to the chagrin of anyone who fancies a distinct or memorable melody from one of these songs. Production-wise, the human component is smothered to rough nonexistence, most damningly on Hell Is Empty with its fake strings and choral vocals, the presumed album centrepiece that’s little more than another cut of artificial gristle.
As for the writing, the band’s verbatim quote is how this album is about “exposing those parts of ourselves we often keep hidden”, though it’s hard to say to what extent this is ‘hidden’ when these exact thrusts have plagued Memphis May Fire lyrics since time immemorial. “It’s always darkest just before the light” is a laughable line to have in a 2025 song, courtesy of The Other Side. Just as laughable is that treacly, overwrought, overproduced pop-metal ballad schlock like this still exists in 2025, but that’s Memphis May Fire for ya—useless at even vaguely keeping abreast of what’s currently working.
Having said that, it’s hard to buy that band with almost two decades’ experience under their belt is that incompetent, when it really could just be laziness. It’s probably not a coincidence that Shapeshifter feels so churned-out and assembled with all the pizzazz of flat-pack furniture. And as much as Memphis May Fire might try to hide it, it never works. Overdose’s quicker tempo might want to simulate the rush of addiction and caving to negative impulses, but that’s wildly more evocative than a sterile Memphis May Fire job can muster. Elsewhere, Paralyzed and Necessary Evil put forward their ‘intense’ shorthands—a music box-style passage and lower, throaty vocals respectively—in the same vein as pandering TikTok backwash like TX2. Might as well apply that notion of pandering to Matty Mullins’ entire vocal performance, too, as his entire being on this album feels perfunctory. Screams come purely out of stylistic necessity without an iota of real passion to speak of, and it’s not even well-disguised.
It needs to be said that none of that should be read with an incredulity to imply surprise. Not a single second of Shapeshifter differs from Memphis May Fire’s usual protocol; if anything is surprising, it’s that they think this is still an acceptable con to pull. It isn’t, for the record, though that’s unlikely to sink in, even when this album inevitably proves to have no legs and adds another failure to Memphis May Fire’s sizable stack. Shapeshifter, however, is almost a special kind of pointless. It exists in a state where there’s no chance of it picking up steam, and where its creators are under the impression that turning up the dial a notch or two is compensation enough for one of the most bland, cold, lifeless and unfulfilling listening experiences to come out of metal this year. Again, that’s just a day at the office for Memphis May Fire, but the feel of it now is so much worse. A total waste of time.
For fans of: Wage War, I Prevail, The Amity Affliction
‘Shapeshifter’ by Memphis May Fire is released on 28th March on Rise Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
Why are you such a negative nancy dude. goodness