Cardiac Arrest - Vortex of Violence (2012)

Cardiac Arrest's fourth full-length Vortex of Violence is another grind soaked slab of old school death metal that wisely decides to stay clear of the current, prevalent trends in the medium and carve its own course into the nostalgia of its potential (and pre-installed) audience. You won't hear any of the gaping, cavernous death/doom chasms so popular, or the knockbacks to Sweden in the early 90s, or even a heavy Floridian influence. I'm sure the quartet is well schooled in all these areas, and yet the sound they settle upon is more one of social and psychological unrest once spewed by the death/grind pioneers like Repulsion, Napalm Death or the faster-paced tunes of British war-masters Bolt Thrower or Benediction.

The grimy guitar tone is heavily responsible, as it sounds like someone has hooked an IV up to your veins and pumped a city sewer system through your body. Or trying to floss your teeth with rusted barbed wire. The riffs cycle through streams of primitive tremolo patterns and bombastic chord sequences redolent of albums like Harmony Corruption, Utopia Banished, Mental Funeral, World Downfall, Realm of Chaos and Horrified. Drums maintain a laid back but aggressive stance in the mix, all raw and natural-like, and the bass feels like sentient, distorted ooze that escaped a tar pit one night and decided to stalk the living for their flesh. Vocalist Adam Scott has a broad, blunt guttural that brings back memories of the old British growlers, though they also hurl forth a more surgical snarl where it can amplify the aural destruction. As for the production, I doubt I'd have it any other way than the dry, brutal honestly implemented here, well suited to letting the vocals and instruments breed their own, morbid puerility.

If I'm being honest, I will admit that the tunes don't possess a great deal of variety. They rarely did with this particular style, but I found myself leaning towards the eerie, simplistic leads, or the more clinical, atmospheric riffs heard in the songs "Conjured Beings" or "Ritual Plague", the latter of which feels like it could have been a lost Deceased song from one of their earlier records (never a bad thing). Generally paced at a middle to faster speeds, you do get a sense of redundancy through the 48 minutes, and perhaps the very length is a component to this: normally, bands of this sort keep their tracks reined in at 2-3 minutes, but Cardiac Arrest pen a few which double that length. Granted, they're not exactly monotonous, but with a set of riffs this familiar that are at best only mild alternations on those of their influences, the music does eventually become a little one-note in its execution. But while these might prove obstacles to some listeners, Vortex of Violence still succeeds in meting out another beating nearly as potent as its predecessor Haven for the Insane, and those with a fetish for the late 80s English death outbreak or US cult legends Autopsy, Cianide and Repulsion will appreciate its humble and heartened belligerence.

Verdict: Win [7/10] 

http://www.cardiacarrest666.com/

Pasadena Napalm Division - P.N.D. EP (2010)

Pasadena Napalm Division is what naturally occurs when you transplant the instantly recognizable vocals of the dirty rotten imbecile of crossover royalty himself, Kurt Brecht, over the angry riffs and drums of the late great Dead Horse members Greg Martin, Scott Sevall and Ronny Guyote, then season with bassist Bubba Dennis II of Verbal Abuse. All Texas, all attitude, all the time, and the P.N.D. EP is the band's first foray into a recording studio. You're probably going to expect some high velocity crossover/thrash, and that is precisely what manifests here, a lot closer to D.R.I. than Dead Horse, but with busier riffing than you'll find on a classic like Dealing With It (or Crossover itself).

The band has no delusions about what it's setting out to create here, and that's a simple and fun unit through which to exert some anger and live entertainment. Six tracks in about 15 minutes. The lyrics are primarily of the sillier variety, as you could imagine from a title like "100 Beers With a Zombie", or "Spell It Out" which takes itself quite literally, but they often veer into a more depressing, slightly serious territory as in the self-derogatory "Failure". Musically, they're not out to waste your time, but simply trying to carve out another slice of the virile energy of the late 80s punk/thrash cross section. Granted, this also means you won't be hearing much of anything new in the riffs. Many of them sound wholly familiar, not only from the backlog of the constituents at play here, but through decades of the stuff all around the globe.

That isn't to say that Pasadena Napalm Division are incompetents, because they inject quite a lot of visceral energy into such basic components. Certainly, the 13 year old skateboard-drunk maniac within me finds something here that calls to the innocence of his soul, and the raw thrashing force of "Speaking in Tongues" and Spanish-tongued "Non Ti Amo" forced him out into a domestic circle pit, knocking over various piles of empty beer bottles, molded Thrasher mag subscriptions and labyrinths of unwound cassettes by Cryptic Slaughter, Bl'AST! and so forth. Deep immersion this is not, but then, that's never been the intent of this hybrid genre. P.N.D. is not home to a wide array of engrossing riffs, and I'd like to hear a full-length with better writing and more interesting note patterns, but the nature of this particular release is to force an ass kicking upon you as swiftly as possible with a carefree bluster, and that at least is on offer, even if your bottom won't remain sore for very long.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

http://www.pasadenanapalmdivision.com/