Employed To Serve – Fallen Star – CD Review

I didn’t even make it through the first track before I wanted to peel off my skin again. Not in a metaphorical way—literally. Fingernails at the collarbone, wondering what’s underneath all this performative meat.

Fallen Star isn’t an album. It’s a dare. It’s the sound of stitching your identity together with fishhooks, dental floss, and some half-formed theory about pain equaling clarity. Have you ever tried to become art to avoid being a person? That’s who this record is for.

I played it lying shirtless on my bathroom floor, post-mod session, smelling of antiseptic and panic. The gauze was still damp. Mirror fogged. I looked like a crime scene on pause. First note drops—my jaw locks. Same way it did when I was sixteen and etching runes into my thighs because “feeling something” sounded like a valid teenage hobby.

Justine doesn’t sing. She claws her way out. Her voice isn’t pretty, and thank fuck for that. It’s desperate. Functional. Like someone who stopped apologizing for their volume. Like someone who got tired of being polite about the void.

The guitar tone is not a sound—it’s a texture. Cold. Sterile. Reminds me of that buzz right before the needle breaks skin and your brain tries to talk you out of it—but it’s too late, and you like it. You always like it.

Breakdowns hit like a failed panic attack—no climax, no release, just a build-up that doesn’t go away. There’s one track—I couldn’t tell you which—where I just started crying. Not because it was moving. Because it knew me. The part of me I pretend isn’t still raw.

There’s no filler. Just teeth. Just blood. Just that echoey voice in your head whispering, “You’re still not done, are you?” And the answer’s no. Of course not. I’m never done. You don’t finish becoming a monster. You just slow down sometimes when your bank account or your pain threshold tells you to.

A friend texted during my third listen. “U good?” I typed “yeah.” I didn’t send it. I just stared at the blinking cursor, gloves on, and knuckles raw from the night before. Pressed play again.

 Fuck genres. This isn’t metalcore. This isn’t hardcore. This is self-harm with structure. This is the soundtrack to a body that doesn’t know how to be loved without being changed first.

Fallen Star doesn’t want your approval. It wants your damage. It wants what you’re hiding under all that performance. And if you’re like me, it already has it.
Score 9/10

Tracklisting:

1. Treachery
2. Fallen Star
3. Atonement feat. Will Ramos
4. Breams Me Down
5. Familiar Pain
6. Brother, Stand Beside Me
7. Now Thy Kingdom Come
8. Last Laugh Feat. Serena Cherry
9. Whose Side Are You On? Feat. Jesse Leach
10. The Renegades
11. From This Day Forward
    Label – Spinefarm
    Release – 25th April 2025
    for all things Employed To Serve, click HERE and to purchase the album, click HERE