Over the past ten years or so God Forbid have made quite a name for themselves. Unfortunately they are one of those bands that seem to get worse as their music gets more radio airtime. Sorry to say it, but it had to be said. The last album that I really enjoyed by them was Gone Forever, which I found to be a decent mix of melodic thrash and death influences. Earthsblood picks up more where IV: Constitution Of Treason left off. The thrash influences are almost non-existent, taking a back seat to repetitive metalcore foolishness.

The album begins with a rather dull piano/symphonic intro that does not tell me anything about the album. Then The Rain comes in with a guitar riff that could have been on their last album and does nothing to get me interested in the song, but I keep listening. The clean vocals in the chorus are a half-hearted attempt at best. The guitar work is not particularly imaginative and overall the song seems to get lost in repetitive metalcore riffing. The song also stops and starts again about halfway through and I can only wonder why. Overall it’s too long and doesn't get me interested much less engaged with the music. The next track, Empire Of The Gun, is not bad but not original enough to really be good. The riffs and overall song structure sound like something that was done years ago by many bands, including them.

The New Clear begins with some pretty good clean vocals and softer guitar work, which perversely reminds me of something from Ayreon's most recent album. This illusion is shattered almost two minutes into the song by heavy guitars and weak guttural vocals. I think this could have been a really excellent song if it wasn't muddled up with attempts to make it sound more aggressive than necessary. Don't get me wrong; I think Byron Davis is a decent vocalist. The man has a good clean singing voice, although his growled vocals do sound a bit weak to me. Likewise the other technical aspects of the band show a lot of potential. However, the songwriting needs a drastic improvement for these guys to have any hope of regaining the aggressive, hard-hitting sound they once had. The final two tracks of the album are a lot longer, the title track coming in at about nine minutes and the last one a bit over seven. These also could have been epic songs, but they again suffer from sounding repetitive, which I feel can be attributed to the band not trying much of anything new but choosing to go with the same old formula and simply stretching it out.

Some people try to call this band thrash. I do not hear it at all on this album. While their first few albums were at least somewhat thrash-inspired, this bears hardly any resemblance to those roots. Making comparisons to more modern thrash-inspired bands such as Trivium and Bloodsimple just does not work for me. The thrash influences this band once portrayed have become too watered down to matter anymore. In songs like Shallow and Empire Of The Gun they try to break through but never get very far. Overall this is an album that suffers from being just too boring and repetitive to be really great.