Vehemence - Forward Without Motion (2015)

If there is one thing I can say unflinchingly in Forward Without Motion's favor, it absolutely sounds like a collection of riffs that spanned about a decade of planning. If the music on this record had been released soon after God Was Created in 2002, I feel as if the Arizona outfit might have catapulted upon the buzz of that album to the level that peers like The Black Dahlia Murder have achieved via their intense permutations of the Swedish melodic death metal style, because there are just loads of guitars here which would have thrilled that same audience for the time. Vehemence does not sound so insipidly driven to emulate any of the same bands, and never really has, which is why the band once cultivated so much praise as a genuine evolution of the medium. Now, with the vast selection of melodies on this new album, I would say that there is indeed some influence per At the Gates, Dark Tranquillity, and so forth, but it's always tasteful and always embellished with some of the band's own personality. But I can't help but feel the title the band chose here is a little tongue-in-cheek...or at the very least, dead accurate.

Going off the guitars alone, there is so much on offer here that you could fill a half-dozen lower tier melodeath discs circa Sweden in the late 90s or early Oughts. Vibrant, glorious melodies springing in near endless succession, often with the density of an early Insomnium. Leads are well plotted and always seem to emotionally capitalize on the sequences leading up to them, and with the exception of a few driving, predictable chord patterns across the nine tunes, I don't think there's any argument to be made that this aspect of the album wasn't the product of great effort. That being said, there was just something about the drumming, the vocals, and the mix of Forward Without Motion that turned me off immediately. The bludgeoning and splashing of the kick and snare drum seem a little too overt and distracting, so when I found my imagination glued to one of the melodies the percussion served only to sever that adhesive bond. The vocals were never really a strong point for Vehemence, since they just lack an original or broad enough guttural charisma to give a proper 'beauty and the beast' balance to those licks. Combined with the drumming, the entire package feels murky and cluttered and somehow unpolished to the level that so many albums of this style seem to thrive on.

And that might not be such a bad thing if the chemistry and effort put into the guitars didn't sound as if it deserved so much more...which they really do. Not all of the riffs are melancholic or sugary or catchy enough to really stand on their own, but they clearly expose a pair of guitarists who have their fingers on the pulse of what has always made this melodic death metal stepchild so distinct from its more visceral sire. It's just a shame that the sum of the disc doesn't come together to highlight them, since they are the beating heart of this material and its one shot at salvation. Granted, if you're an addict for more aggressive/brutal melodic death metal like Japan's Intestine Baalism, or you swear by a lot of those bands that broke in the early 21st century like TBDM or Beyond the Embrace, or you were a die hard for the first three Vehemence records, then I think you're at least going to be impressed by the painstaking effort that went into a chunk of this material. Not a bad comeback by any means. A few miles above their lackluster Helping the World to See, which was their previous swan song with Metal Blade Records, but certain components just have so much more staying power than others here, that it created an incongruous (if consistent) experience, from the production to the lyrics ("She Fucks Like She's Alive" seems somewhat out of place), that put me off.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Vehemence-Band/161809840511896

Vehemence - Helping the World to See (2004)

It's amazing that, in the ever shifting winds of the metal genre, the gulf of but a few years can transform a band's teeming potential into sodden excess, but that is precisely what occurred when the Arizona outfit Vehemence launched their third album, second for Metal Blade, called Helping the World to See. Granted, the cover image here is surreal, superior to the earlier albums, and I had hopes that the musical content might match its allure, but really this feels as if the band tried to re-create God Was Created, amplifying a few of that record's constituent elements to unwelcome levels, and forging a magnanimity that falls very flat on the fat curve of its own, bloated buttocks.

Where its predecessor managed climactic poles through taut, intense riffage unending, and the carefully written clean guitars, keyboards, and such, Helping the World to See tends to fail at strongarming the listener. "By Your Bedside" sounds like nearly any US band attempting the Swedish melodic death intensity, albeit with the gruff, guttural vocals and a shitty US metalcore breakdown that I almost laughed at. "Kill For God" seems a little closer to the last effort, with some bristling melodic riffs that culminate in a rather weak nod back to "She Never Noticed Me". "You Don't Have to Be Afraid Anymore" and "Alone in Your Presence" also bring back the acoustic guitars and subtle, narrative vocal textures, but once they both go metal you get pretty average post-At the Gates/In Flames riffing with a thrashing impetus. The remainder of the tracks are scattered with half-baked ideas at best, like the powerful melodic chords tossed into the bridge of "Her Beautiful Eyes" or "What Could Go Wrong?"

Coinciding with the rise of flaky 'New Wave of American Heavy Metal Bands' which are often little more than Gothenburg wannabe bands with Panterrible vocals and mosh core breakdowns, Helping the World to See feels all too contrived and forgettable. But to be honest, it's not a huge leap away from the album before it, just a leap sideways and then back. The songs are nowhere near as interesting, the production not as good, the lyrics tend to suck, the vocals relegated to typical grunts and snarling that once again sounds, and like the first Vehemence record, you get about 1-2 good parts per song and the rest is chaff, a composite of then-current trends striving to amount to the next Slaughter of the Soul, Jester Race, or Heartwork, and coming up well short of the goal. It's not as if the album were merely phoned in or defecated out, there is more refinement here than that, but it's incalcitrant against the inspirational underpinnings of its next oldest sibling.

Verdict: Indifference [5/10] (no word is ever safe)

http://www.myspace.com/vehemence

Vehemence - God Was Created (2002)

If Vehemence stirred up a buzz with their debut The Thoughts From Which I Hide, it was ultimately undeserved, not because it was the most steaming puddle of shit across the flood plain of USDM mediocrity, but because it was entirely void of any personality worth noting. The band might also have been unsatisfied, because God Was Created crosses a major evolutionary gulf in sound. Now touting a deal with big movers Metal Blade Records, the enhancements to both production and musicality seemed to coincide with a band on the way up the ladder of attention, and indeed this must have been the case. Several death metal fans I know cite this as one of their favorite albums in the genre, and while I won't claim it's anywhere even such close to such praise, it's the best of Vehemence, and their sole album worth hearing.

Basically, this is an approach to complex and somewhat technical melodic death metal which bears only passing similarities to the European bands that were already huge by this time. You can hear some vague comparisons to Dark Tranquillity, At the Gates, or early In Flames in the writing, but the Arizonans distinguish themselves by maintaining the brutal death metal aesthetics of their debut. The growls, snarls and even clean narrative vocals are a marked improvement over their debut, in that they're mixed level to the instruments rather than trying to overwhelm them like the previous album, and the songs create an occasionally hypnotic balance of tranquility and disgust. Never more so than the track "She Never Noticed Me", which is glazed with an impressive chug-melody pair off late in the bridge that rides out the playtime.

It's a concept album, and believe it or not, the lyrical implications are pretty faithful to the debut. This is a story about a disaffected youth who, in his obsession over a young woman of his acquaintance, goes on a killing spree, with some necrophilia involved. Sure, it's as fucked and twisted as you'd expect in the death metal genre circa Cannibal Corpse, but the way Vehemence have manifest and structured the contents through a chronological narrative of the music are commendable. You'll go from sympathy for this loser, to disgust at his immoral actions, and then even a morbid revulsion which extends beyond the carnal to the realm of existential terror. Of course, there's more to the story which you can read for yourselves. It's a rarity, even by today's standards and super saturation of the form, and clearly the strongest trait on the entire record, executed lovingly in tracks like "Fantasy from Pain", "Lusting for Affection", and "I Didn't Kill Her".

If God Was Created lacks, it's that it throws so many riffs at you that some are bound to slide off your armor, and while I cannot deny the amount of sheer effort these lads must have put into the album's construction, I occasionally feel some of those 'less would be more' moments that might have crafted more memorable compositions. Though they are cleverly disguised here, the band also still shifts into some of their slam breakdowns, but at least the complexity adds some depth to these that they don't seem so contrived or annoying. Earlier I lauded the band's improvement in the vocal area, and indeed, they are far better than those found on The Thoughts From Which I Hide, but they still sound to me overbearing in spots, like a metalcore band playing melodic death, and it can be distracting over the superior musical content. That said, this is the best of Vehemence's works, certainly the one to experience if you're tracking down the band for the first time, and the one they'll need to one-up.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (I can't fulfill my urges)

http://www.myspace.com/vehemence

Vehemence - The Thoughts From Which I Hide (2000)

Vehemence is a band that was highly cited by my circle of metal friends in the early years of the 21st century as one of the most promising in emergent death metal, but their material has never left an impression on me for long, so I've decided to turn back time and re-examine their albums to see if my reaction has changed. They've since run their career on a roller coaster trajectory, signing to Metal Blade records for their rather well received sophomore God Was Created, dropped mid-decade, some of the members escaping to Abigail Williams, and then reforming a few years later to give it another go, which has yet to bear its inevitable fruit.

The Thoughts From Which I Hide, on the other hand, was a debut that showcased only a few traces of what the band would evolve into come 2002. Vehemence are often described as a 'melodic death metal' band with a difference from most European acts that explore the style, but that isn't very accurate for this record. For the most part, it's your standard mesh of old school and slamming elements simmered in a crisp, popping mix where the rich guitar tone is heavily slathered in the (perhaps too loud) grunting and barking, the drums given a grooving feel through the snap of the snares and the beats they're usually meting out along to the many chug slams of the album. For a self-released, limited run like this, the album does have a pretty clean production, though I think at times it might seem a little too tidy, gimping some of its guttural lethality.

A few of the songs definitely have some potential, like the rape/murder fantasy "I Take Your Life" which flows with some clinical riffs that draw comparisons to a mix of Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Deicide, and Pestilence. The band shows a willingness to cycle through varied dynamic climes, but they usually end up at a slow, trudging groove, perfect for the unassuming, die hard devotee of brutal USDM and slam, but not all that interesting for the rest of us. Chug and squeal, rinse and repeat. "Whore Cunt Die" once again services the band's love of the finer sex, the soundtrack to a pseudo-Mother Mary molestation and sexual crucifixion performed by a religious freak, which has a decent, catchy melody to the mute-stream of the verse. Sadly, this too turns into mediocre mosh grooves, and it's a pattern used all too often here, so even when the band decides to thrust at a higher velocity ("What You've Become" or "Devour the Rotten Flesh"), you know what you're in for eventually, 1-2 decent riffs among a herd of misfires.

The lyrics foster the same interest for misogyny that one will find in the entire strain of Cannibal Corpse style bands, though to be fair, the Arizonans do it with a more personal 'touch', trying to jump inside the mind of the killers and rapists they examine with lyrics that would very well disturb anyone not in the know to the genre. The atmospheric flourishes used in the 11:26 closer "Reconditioning the Flock" are quite surprising. Synthesizers, clean guitars and the criticism of religious sheeple all seem to handle well there, but it's too late to save the uneven contents up to that point. The Thoughts From Which I Hide is hardly more lamentable than many death metal albums at the turn of the century, but it's well outside the realm of those albums worth tracking down for their musical value, and disappears all too quickly from the conscience despite its grisly lyrical fixations.

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10] (giving away your love gift)

http://www.myspace.com/vehemence