“It is brutal, rather technical and it has its roots in death metal. But is Exodromos a pure brutal technical death metal album? A lazy, complacent answer would be: yes. A more elaborate response – and one you would expect to read on these respected pages – is: not quite.” Alex Franquelli reviews the new Wormed record, in all its brutal, technical glory and asks “What next?”
New York brutal death metal pioneers, Suffocation, have never sounded better. Even though their seventh studio album, Pinnacle of Bedlam, is the first without longtime drummer Mike Smith, the music’s percussive section has not lost its technical edge. Dave Culross—whose drumming last appeared on Suffocation’s 1998 EP, Despise the Sun—fulfills his role as the band’s blast-beating machine well. From the opening burst of percussive gunfire in opening track, “Cycles of Suffering”; to the sluggish, cymbals-heavy drumming heard in tenth and final track, “Beginning of Sorrow”; Culross displays an aptitude for adjusting the knob on the tempometer as and when appropriate. Still, there is not much creativity when it comes to filling in the aural blanks between both tracks, as Culross predictably serves up a plethora of blast beats. But hey, this is Suffocation. Expecting their drummer to do anything else but that is like expecting Crucio Siege Tanks to remain in tank mode while defending Terran bases [It’s like he’s speaking Klingon — Steel Druhm].
Tech death is a fickle mistress. Madam X is our less fickle mistress of evil, debasement and death. Join her as she examines the techy, deathy strew cooked up by Kamikabe. It doesn’t sound all that appetizing, does it?
More tech-death you say? Maybe that’s the new re-thrash! Hmm, what kind of tank does one drive to support tech-death? It better be something brootal!
When an album lands in my inbox accompanied by an apology from Angry Metal Guy himself, you know it’s gonna be a rough listen.
How far from reality would it be to argue that death metal has become a saturated genre with no room for improvement? I suddenly imagine a short chubby skinhead with a 50 cm long goatee screaming at my invalid premise which makes my argument seem quite farfetched. So we have now at our hands Metamorphosis which is the fourth full-length album by California’s Vile and it comes six years after 2005’s well received The New Age of Chaos, and that my fellow metal heads is a long time to put out a death metal album. Makes you wonder how the new one sounds like, doesn’t it? Well if you are familiar with their older works and the current worldwide vitals of death metal, you wouldn’t be really surprised by this record. This is an album that sounds quite contemporary as far as death metal goes and carries some obvious influences than can be traced to Deicide, Suffocation and 20th century Morbid Angel. Another thing I realized as soon as I saw the artwork is how much it reminded me of Atheist’s Jupiter, but I guess it would be impossible to scan the entire metal spectrum for cover art just to make sure what the artist you’re paying may or may not have copied.
When you hear the phrase “old-school death metal,” you pretty much know what to expect. You can rattle off the usual list of influences (Death, Entombed, Autopsy, etc.) by heart, and you can envision the sound in your mind without hearing a single note. There’s about 9 thousand bands that are playing this style today, and neither you or I give a fuck about them because it was already done 20 years ago, and better. So when Danish band Deus Otiosus describes their debut full-length, Murderer, as “old-school death metal,” you know what you’re in for, right?
I have to admit right up front that I wasn’t overly familiar with Severe Torture and their cadaver of work prior to getting tasked with this review. I had heard bits and pieces of previous albums but nothing about them ever really grabbed my attention or made me feel the need to track down their material. So as I got familiar with Slaughtered, this Dutch death metal band’s fifth platter (or should I say splatter), I was pretty shocked by the quality of the material on display. Maybe I simply missed the boat on their earlier stuff but this is a solid enough release that I plan to go back to investigate much more carefully in the near future.
Every once in a while a record just jumps out at you and kicks your ass every which way. The originality, the brutality, everything that you want from death metal just hits you right in the face and leaves you dazed, but pleased. The Reign of Darkness, the sophomore release of UK death metallers (or deathcorers if you read the interwebs, though I’m inclined to just call this death metal) is not one of those records. And while it can be very difficult to write about just how good a band is or how bad a band is, I find the most difficult reviews to write the ones where you have to say “I don’t like it, but you might if this is your thing.”
