Mantar - Death by Burning (2014)

Hamburg's Mantar certainly isn't the first two-headed beast to enter the sludge universe, that honor might fall upon Jucifer (or someone else that I'm not thinking of). However, they certainly aim to be one of the most dynamic acts in the niche, regardless of any misconceived limitations one might foist upon them due to their lack of personnel...these guys come up with huge sounds, mandatory for the style, and also inject much-needed variation. I never got the impression through Death by Burning that this pair was afraid to try anything...not that they do here, but this is the sort of partnership where only tenuous boundaries have been set, and while the debut isn't particularly unique amidst a wide field in a trendy niche, it definitely has enough moments of promise that it won't be the last time I deign to listen to what they have to offer...

Now, I've heard a lot of sludgy stuff over the years, but very little of it has truly resonated with me. In fact, despite all the accounts of how 'artistic' or 'heavy' this style is, I find it relies a little too much on guitar tone and lacks somewhat in the creativity department. 'But it's all bout the riffs, ma'an!' Yeah, but who's riffs? A lot of what I've experienced is composed of little more than borrowed doom/heavy blues rock dating back about four decades, or grunge and stoner/desert chord patterns that by this point are just too familiar and banal to interest me; rehashed and then drowned in fuzz, volume and reverb to the extent that it might fool someone into thinking it's 'fresh' by default. Not a lot of these bands are as tortured as an Eyehategod, or as musically ambitious as a Mastodon, and I guess that would be too much to expect. I'd likely rate Mantar alongside an earlier Baroness in terms of the form, function and creativity of their songwriting. There are a lot of overt nods to older records, like the groovy chugs in the verse of "Cult Witness", which sound a hell of a lot like the "Immigrant Song", but for the most part they do what they can to diversify the heavier, lower grooves and then a sheen of added noise or ambiance featured through some higher, atmospheric notes.

There are angrier tunes redolent of High on Fire, and raunchy heavy rock riffs redolent of the Melvins, but basically Mantar must be credited for keeping the tunes busy enough, and the listener's ears affixed to the excellent drum mix, massive guitar and painful sounding vocals which definitely work on an aggro, wastoid emotional level that is just as fascinating as any of the duo's musical choices. A fraction of a punk influence, perhaps a slightly black metallic edge to the vocals and airier, distant guitars; maybe a little thrash too...but, like, Lemmy-thrash. There are a few dud riffs which sound a lot like older Orange Goblin jamming with Down, but for the most part you get some subtlety and nuance dispersed over or under the multiple breaks in the central action. A lot of sludge bands will entirely ignore the same sheen of melody that the Germans incorporate above the weighted undertow, but Mantar is just as canny on building atmosphere and ambiance as, say, Neurosis. And certainly they do not sound like just two people performing, but a phalanx of ogres. That said, there are a few too many moments on the record where nothing much is really going on, like the drum/feedback outro of "White Nights", etc, where the band's heaviness is supposed to somehow carry over through the void, and it just doesn't. In fact, I got the impression that once 3-4 of the songs had cleared, you had heard most of the band's tricks and some redundancy would set in...

...except for the 7-8 minute finale "March of the Crows", but that's more of a droning, freeform sort of thing with only a few riffs of note and it's frankly the worst song on the record because it just seems like they set a reel to record them and made it up on the fly. You get about as much out of these sorts of tunes as someone puts into them, and this one in particular could have been shaved off. Otherwise, Death by Burning is the sort of effort I could really see rising up the rungs of the sludgy Decibel/Pitchfork ladder by year's end. I thought it was a solid start, but I'd personally like to hear them go even wilder on the songwriting, let a few of the languishing 'stoner standard' riffs lapse out of the creative process and focus on the more engaging and mechanical passages. At any rate, they're worth checking out if you're into anyone else I mentioned in the review, or others like Kylesa, Latitudes, Torche or Anciients.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

https://www.facebook.com/MantarBand

Morfin - Inoculation (2014)

Unlike many death metal throwbacks of recent years, Californians Morfin choose to satiate their old school impulses by more directly revisiting their Floridian influences, or bands that were pretty early inspired by those same aesthetics. So if Inoculation sounds quite a lot like Massacre, Death, Obituary, Resurrection, Morgoth, (old) Atrocity, Autopsy or Gorguts, you can bet that it's probably not all that much of a coincidence. This debut sounds like it was written, produced and released around 1990-1991 at the latest, so I'll come right out and say that if you're in any way turned off by a lack of progression, athletic musical ability, and innovation in death metal music, this is just not for you. If you pine for that same feeling you had when you first peeled the shrink-wrap off your copies of Spiritual Healing, From Beyond, Embalmed Existence, Considered Dead, Hallucinations, Cause of Death, or Resurrection Absurd/The Eternal Fall, then Inoculation is not only in your clubhouse, but it's also eating your cheese doodles and leaving sticky, orange fingerprints all over your titty magazines.

It doesn't hurt that the ambient intro to "Evil Within" also sets up that same sense of post-apocalyptic/horror vibe that the cover implies, so you could see this as a sort of Return of the Living Dead/Resident Evil spinoff given death metal flesh. The deeper end tremolo riffs sound almost as if Scott Burns mixed them, and the bass has a really swarthy, but cleaner sound that also recollects a number of the aforementioned albums. Riffs are hardly inventive, they've got in some cases 30 years of history behind them, but without dipping into the oldies themselves, you simply don't hear a lot of albums that come along that use this sort of emulation. So many bands are off remaking Left Hand Path, Onward to Golgotha or Warmaster that it seems this antiquated cluster of formative, influential groups from the late 80s seem slightly neglected. If Californian bands like Skeletal Remains or Morfin have their way, that will all change, because they've got all the hallmarks of the style: brutish growls circa Schuldiner/Tardy/Reifert, tight and functional rhythm sections that keep to the script instead of flying off everywhere impulsively, and dank, clinical riffing cycles that sound genuinely eerie and alien...I really feel like I'm in the middle of a zombie outbreak in the late 80s, with no cellphone to phone for backup, so I'll just have to grab the nearest fire axe and...make a path.

Granted, not a lot of the tunes here have the same level of catchy picking that defined the first three Death records, and they thrive off precedents rather than creating them, but Inoculation is entirely well performed, even down to the leads which flirt within those old school progressive/death metal parameters while wailing another atmosphere dimension over the solid backing rhythms. The vocals are brute and ugly, the harmony riffs are quite surgical in nature, and there's nothing 'warm' or comfortable available musically. I could do without the bass solo track ("Primordial"), which seems to stick out a little too much, though if you think about it, so did "Anaesthesia (Pulling Teeth)"...well, this one isn't that. The "Leprosy" cover also seems a little too obvious, and also plays it far too straight, without making it their own, though that would be hard when their 'own' is more or less a facsimile of that sound to begin with. But other than those two tunes, the eight originals all deliver on the premise of the band, which is to pay homage to this specific style which is simply not commonplace amongst all the retro-death so in fashion today. To that extent, I did enjoy it, probably not as much as Skeletal Remains' Beyond the Flesh, but for about 35 minutes of this material I felt like I was a 14 year old again in 1988, and I don't disapprove. If only I had the hair back! Gods, the hair...but it looks like the members of Morfin have me covered there, too.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10]

https://www.facebook.com/morfindeathmetal

Omnizide - Death Metal Holocaust (2014)

Rather than become the bazillionth utterance of its Swedish forebears' ideas, Omnizide attempts to tap straight into the primal, molten veins of what made the cruder death metal of the 90s so important to begin with. That's not to preclude this project of black metallers (Craft, Avsky, etc) from deriving a few riffing patterns here or there, but Death Metal Holocaust is clearly an album in which some investment of songwriting and variation occurred, and the result is that the guitars themselves and general atmosphere is noticeably catchier than what you're hearing from the majority of groups pursuing this path. There's nothing 'new' sounding about this debut, but it's appreciably abyssal, nihilistic, and wretched, with no apologies for its ugliness, or for giving the retro death metal aesthetic what it might need...a hellish injection of black metal misanthropy.

This is felt primarily in the harshness of the vocals, which forsakes a bit of the usual guttural depth for a more malicious, uncaring pitch that borders on the traditional Scandinavian rasp associated with a lot of second wave black metal bands. I'm reminded somewhat of their countrymen Nifelheim, which is no surprise because Omnizide has a similar spin on archaic extreme metal abuse not unlike Hellbutcher's side project Necrocurse which has been around for a few years. Nuclear wind-blown, dense tremolo picked guitars cross a bleak landscape of bone and ash, once in awhile coming up with a riff that actually sticks to the brain, something nearly impossible for so much of the death and black metal I'm hearing lately. But the real treat is that they'll mix these components up with slower, black/doom passages that really round out the record's capacity for atmospheric immersion. Typical Swedish death techniques like d-beats are included enough that Death Metal Holocaust remains in view of all the other bands exploring this skull-paved path down memory lane, but Omnizide maintain that pervasive sense of 'evil' that transcends a collection of safe riffs into more of an 'experience'.

That's not to say it's perfectly penned and executed, because there are definitely a number of chord patterns here that don't live up to the rest, in particular when they're playing in more of a Hellhammer/mid-paced Bathory mold it can get a little dull. Fortunately, they mix up the speeds often enough that it never becomes all that much of a detriment. Also, though they're slathered with a number of sustained, gory growls, Michael Nox's vocal pitch here can become as monotonous as an endless gray waste, in which the listener has only a limited range of visibility; whereas I often wanted the guy to go completely batshit and apply maybe a few more higher pitched ugly screams or other techniques to really go mental. That said, for some listeners, this will be a critical part of the record's charms...like Craft, the aim here is to compose simplistic, sinister and serious sounding tunes that leech the very color from the listener's immediate environment, and it's another record which 100% lives up to sounding like the cover artwork looks. Grim, ghastly old school death and black metal for fans of anything from Nihilist and Dismember to Craft and Pest. The album also does include the two cuts from the 2011 Please from Death single, which are slightly blacker sounding, but help flesh out Holocaust to a 40+ minute fallout, a breath of cinders, soot and hatred that, for a spell, rubs out the sunlight. Charcoal fucking metal.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

https://www.facebook.com/omnizide

Demilich - 20th Adversary of Emptiness (2014)

How to make a near-perfect record even better...re-issue it during a period where it isn't readily available, with intriguing new cover art in a limited edition 3LP or 2CD set, that includes what is very likely the entirety of what the band has ever recorded. Now, trust me when I tell you, that if you've been holding out on Nespithe and never had the chance to purchase it, this Svart versions release of what was originally supposed to be put out by Antti Boman and Demilich themselves is what you want. Yeah, I know firsthand, having the original CD or cassette is cool in of itself, but you're getting an enormous value that collects the demos and rare recordings in a comprehensive fashion so that you're no longer forced to mine for them online or receive them piecemeal through earlier issues of the CD. This is Demilich, and very possibly all that they will ever create, so what the fuck are you waiting for, and if you've long owned another version and are craving some vinyl, you may not get another opportunity like this.

The centerpiece of this is obviously Nespithe itself, and while a co-blogger of mine has already offered his two cents on the experience, with a perfect score (one I don't largely disagree with), I felt it appropriate to explain why I have so long enjoyed it, and why it's easily my favorite of the classic Finnish death metal works (at least on the uglier side of the equation). Originally a blind buy on tape through Necropolis/Pavement, and probably one of the last cassettes I purchased, as I was transitioning to CDs. I had not come across the band through tape trading, but the name instantly appealed to me through my love of Dungeons & Dragons and all things fantastic, metallic, evil and arcane, though this was a point at which I'd already cut my hair and become the college guy, listening to just as much new sound outside of metal as within it. And that's really part of the appeal of Demilich...their strange, atonal, Bolt Thrower-grooving take on the sound which relies heavy on the quirky repetition of evil note patterns and the amphibious, unaffected guttural rumble of Boman. Throw in the cryptic lyrical schemes and over-the-top song titles like "The Planet That Once Used to Absorb Flesh in Order to Achieve Divinity and Immortality (Suffocated to the Flesh That It Desired...)", and you've got a concoction that any death metal dweeb would (and did) find impossible to resist. And as much as I enjoyed other classics of this scene (Worth Without God, Slumber of Sullen Eyes), I felt this was mildly less tethered to the Florida/Swedish traditions...no, this was something new.

With the 20th Adversary of Emptiness, you're hearing Nespithe like you've not heard it before, remastered from the original master tapes rather than the lesser version that had been reprinted in the past. The bass and guitars seem a bit more evil, the drums really pop out and Boman still sounds like an undead bullywug gurgling frogs. Yet, you still have that entire toilet-bowl atmosphere due to interaction of the deeper vocals with the swarthy bass and higher pitched grooving melodies. It sounds phenomenal, and every subtlety and detail comes out to the fore here, with some of the moodiest and most creative chord progressions you'll find in cult death metal hands down. These guys were just as off-the-hinge as a Cynic or Carbonized, well before stuff like Gorguts Obscura came down the pipe to redefine death metal's boundaries, and although it fits fully within the genre, the groove and jazziness certainly places it within reach of the 'avant-garde'. It's just one of those albums you hear once and never forget, for better or worse, and if I had to piece together a top 20 death metal record list of all time, it would feature prominently, even if it wasn't at the top. And that's only the first LP in this package, mind you...

The second, Em9t2ness of van2s1ing, features both The Four Instructive Tales...of Decomposition and the ...Somewhere Inside the Bowels of Endlessness demos (from 1991-1992), and while a number of the tunes are redundant to the full-length, they sound even uglier here, but with a lot of that same ridiculous quality to the vocals. The downside is that I always felt the instruments themselves (guitars mostly) just weren't as pronounced against Boman's void-swallowing timbre, though the crudeness is very likely to appeal to that minority crowd which simply prefers everything as rough and tumble as possible, and these demos certainly give a more squamous and grinding impression than the 'refinement' on the full-length. Of the two, Four Instructive Tales... is superior, since it has some non-album material which most people who loved the full-length forever would appreciate, only this has been put released before, I believe on both the Repulse and Century Media CD re-issues.

On the last record, V34ish6ng 0f emptiness, we're presented with the The Echo demo (also 1992) on the A-side, which is once again a bit redundant since it's almost all on the full-length, but for completion's sake why the hell not? More excitingly, the 'vanishing' sessions on the B-side, which were what I was most looking forward to hearing. A trilogy of tunes recorded in 2006 which are frankly excellent and aimed at what was essentially a Nespithe 2.0 aesthetically, the one difference being that the guitars are more raucous and grinding directly against the vocal gurgles. Riff-wise these are not a far cry from 1993, and I think for most people that would have sufficed. Personally, though I enjoyed these tunes, Demilich always struck me as the type that might try and go further 'out there', so I was a little surprised that the material didn't feel so alien, but who knows what might have occurred had this group continued its career from Nespithe onward?

Top this off with the usual boxed set stuff, like a poster, sticker, and a pretty comprehensive booklet which includes a lengthy interview, original artwork, and just about anything the completist would desire, and you have a package well worth owning, provided you don't have to sell off your little sister to acquire it. And even THEN, it might STILL be worth the trade...just think, no more potty-mouth bitching, no more Justin Bieber, no more lollipops, no more Ke$ha, no more My Little Pony...just an amorphous mass of primordial Finnish death metal that sounds like it was paid forward from the formation of a black hole. Do it, bro! Human traffickers are often just a phone call away.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.75/10] (the weight that all molecules lack)

http://www.anentity.com/demilich/

Amputated - Dissect, Molest, Ingest (2014)

England's Amputated is a band which, in the past, struck me as having a lot of positive traits for brutal death metal without ending up particularly memorable on the whole. Wading Through Rancid Offal, for example, had one of the better cover artworks in the entire niche, impressive production standards, fun song titles, samples to make the squeamish squeam, and no shortage of musical competence and aggression, but with all that...it just fell short of resonating with me. Hell, this band also had an album called Gargling With Infected Semen, so naturally I feel compelled to root for them regardless of the outcome, and I'm elated to report that the third time out, Amputated has finally turned that last corner to create something with a lot more replay value.

No, they haven't added a heap of melodies or catchy choruses in there, this is still largely in a gestational period between mid-90s Cannibal Corpse and more contemporary brutal/slamming death metal; you've got a lot of chugging-based riff progressions peppered with squeals and trills, and contrasted deep guttural and grisly snarl vocals weaving a trail of eviscerated flesh together. But, like another UK band I've been admiring (Ingested), these guys have uncovered the secret to having a great balance of entertaining grooves and more uptempo material. Of note here is the jubilant popping tone of the bass guitar which gives the whole affair a sort of tongue in cheek quality, but more importantly the tacit punctuation of the rhythm guitar and the utter remorselessness of the drumming when they dial up a ferocious double kick fill ("The Local Flavour") or just outright blast ("Subatomic Insemination")...it's like concrete being poured over a stash of murder victims. There's also a surgical level of detail to the guitar techniques which will recount not only the aforementioned Corpse as they transitioned from the Barnes to Fisher years, but also some Suffocation, Mortal Decay and many other top and middle shelf US brutes.

Lyrically they're not about to stand out from the pack, but you knew that the first time you laid eyes on this. 'Odes' to body horror, cannibalism, mutation and murder abound, and the cover artwork is once again excellent in prefacing the experience you're about to have, since the music truly relays the dynamics of a butcher knife rising and falling as it chops through meat and bone. Amputated are generally quite concise, but still pack a fair number of riffs into each composition that you'll never become weary, even when they 'extend' outward to about 5 minutes with "Toolbox Abortionist" (much of which is an outro sample, admittedly). The tremolo patterns interspersed amidst the cement slams are a mix of clownish and evil note selections, which ultimately reinforces the pervasive sense of serial murder glee. There isn't a damn thing anywhere on the album that I'd consider truly original or essential for the genre, yet Dissect, Molest, Ingest is a tighter and more effective experience than even its predecessor, which was well on its way to being so. Not nearly perfect, but good enough stuff if you just wanna kick your feet back and dream about how you'd carve up your...I should go no further.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10] (septic felch, wretched belch)

https://www.facebook.com/amputated

Bloodbath - The Fathomless Mastery (2008)

Now, I'm not normally the sort of 'center of the universe' critic who thinks entirely in absolutes and rants endlessly for pages about those opinions which deviate from my own. I don't haphazardly slap a zero on a record just because a friend of a friend's metalcore sister who watches MTV once said At the Gates sounded 'pretty sweet', nor do I shower glowing praise upon every 11th generational extreme metal record shat down the pipe, just because this or that forum/clique/club/a-hole thinks its cool to wear the patch this month. I know you've all got your Neil Diamond vinyls stashed away in that closet, fuckers! That said, I would find it incredibly difficult to take seriously anyone who can look me in the eye and tell me they think a Bloodbath album doesn't bring at least SOMETHING to the table that they enjoy. Again: no absolutes. They do not by any means write timeless, legendary albums like Left Hand Path, Realm of Chaos or Altars of Madness, but to deny that they've got their fingers on the blueprints to what makes an 'old school' death metal song sound brutal, fun and inspired without the usual stupidity would be a crime. The fact that they kickstarted the project well before whatever latest round of Dismember or Morbid Angel clones this or that cyber-posse holds dear this week, is just icing on the victim's corpse...

Sure, the Swedish veterans might have an inherent recipe for success. They probably have an advantage due to the members' participation in other, more financially independent acts. They may actually give a shit about not having the production sound like it came out of a dumpster in a trailer park, and have the means and connections to make it happen (even within their own foster). Yeah, so what? They put in the work those many years, and they reaped the rewards. The truth is, there isn't a member of this band who hadn't participated on some fantastic records long before this team up was conceived, and it's just not a surprise to me that I haven't met a Bloodbath long player that I didn't get a kick out of. 'Commercializing retro death metal'? With three full-length albums in 16 years? Hardly. At any rate, The Fathomless Mastery is another jewel in the crown of what makes this group so consistent. They care about what they're doing to the point that, even at their most conservative or uninspired, like a loping 2-3 chord groove which far too many bands have made entire careers out, they manage to put some small quality spin, be it a bend, measure-ending note choice, or a quick transition to snap the listener right back to intention and not repeatedly bludgeon him/her with the blandness. This is also a further transformation of their sound, and not for the worse: Resurrection Through Carnage was raw and primordial 1990 Swedish death metal, Nightmares Made Flesh took that and implanted a cleaner character with better riffs and structure, and this disc applies a slightly more polished sheen of technicality and variety which by no means detracts from the core concept.

Is it a paean to Dismember, Carnage and Entombed? To an extent, and that was clearly the impetus behind the band in the late 90s; but I actually got more of an impression of earlier Necrophobic meets faster Hypocrisy with some Grave-like grooves, with the obvious Floridian roots exposed (which could be said of almost any death metal group). Techniques are typical: memorable, textured tremolo patterns burst across the sepulcher-scape or slow to a mid-paced, churning cemetery swagger, while the grooves are well built but painfully simple, to the point that they're all going to evoke instant callbacks to the audiences' favorite genre records of old, without too much finger pointing. Pacing is evenly distributed in most of the songs, not to mention the album as a whole, and there's always going to be some rhythmic pattern in there that you didn't quite expect, to keep it fresh and imposing even when there's no denying its paraphrased origins. Mikael Åkerfeld's growling might not be to everyone's taste, but he definitely sounds more sinister and excitable than you'd expect given his more ponderous, meandering past gutturals over the harder Opeth material. Per and Blakkheim don't attempt to assuade the listener with their technical capability, but instead focus on rounding out each rhythmic script with stylish leads and what must be their clearest guitar tone yet, more on the level of the Unblessing the Purity EP than anything previous. Riffs and drums generate atmosphere through both their impenetrable, unerring confidence and just the right relish of reverb to tie it all together.

All without sounding wimpy, plastic, or over-processed. The chords still have enough edge to them that those into the older records, or really anything from the Swedish mainstays (Unleashed, Entombed, Grave, etc) would approve, and they certainly continue the Cannibal Corpse/Malevolent Creation influence that I felt pretty strongly on the EP. Renkse's bass tone here sounds positively livid even though it still tends to disappear into the rhythm guitar riffing patterns, and Martin Axenrot is nearly mechanical by this point, though he keeps the upper range of the kit splashy and rough enough to contrast the robotic consistency with which he hammers out the kicks and tom rolls. I personally enjoyed the constant, dour and melancholic sense of melody exploding everywhere...it only takes a simple stretch of notes to give the tunes that added depth. I also loved the tendency to briefly squirm into a more technical/brutal area with those mid-90s squeals built into the riffing brickwork/grooves ("Mock the Cross" being the prime example). So too must I point out for a band that was put together mostly for 'fun', the lyrics are just as serious as you'd expect from most top end death metal (Vader, etc) without traipsing entirely into torture/gore porn territory. Over all I'd consider them the equal of Deicide and Morbid Angel with a few memorable song titles like "Wretched Human Mirror".

This isn't quite as good as Nightmares Made Flesh, if only because the riffs on tunes like "Year of the Cadaver Race" are their best yet, but certain tunes here like "Mock the Cross", "At the Behest of Their Death" or the choppy, nearly djentish-prefaced "Devouring the Feeble" are all just as awesome as when I first tore the plastic off my copy, and I'd be hard-pressed to find a runt anywhere in the litter. So I dig it only a fraction less than the sophomore. It's death metal for just about anyone who actually likes Swedish, Polish or older US death metal, throwing in obvious nods to dozens of forerunners without trying to bite them off 100%. This isn't a case of 'let's remake Life is an Everflowing Stream or Dark Recollections directly, but chucks them into the same cauldron as a hundred other 1987-1995 inspirations and gets to work honoring in lieu of robbing. Bloodbath sounds like other bands, but it also sounds like Bloodbath. I could name two dozen trending underground heroes that can't say the same, and so could you. Well worth hearing, and if you've given the group a pass due to not digging Katatonia or Opeth or October Tide or whatever honest or political/scenester reason, then give them another try. There is surely some common ground here you'll enjoy whether you dub yourself a fan of new or old death metal.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (predators abide)

http://bloodbath.biz/

Nechbeyth - Coerce Creed EP (2014)

Coerce Creed is a clear candidate for that old Alfred Pennyworth Dark Knight quote 'Some men just want to watch the world burn'; so honed are they to the principle of aural destruction that annoying terms like 'songwriting' or 'catchiness' are eviscerated, stuffed and turned into sausages which the Singaporean trio then cram into their gullets. Obvious and inevitable comparisons will be made to the long-standing Impiety, in particular their older material where the production was hellbent on raucous annihilation, but I'd also throw a lot of other names like Bestial Warlust, Impaled Nazarene, Blasphemy and Conqueror into the ring, essentially the 90s 'war metal' gods who split the black, death, grind, punk and extreme thrash down their middles and then feasted on their intestines. I would say Nechbeyth definitely play a little closer to the raw black metal aesthetics once fostered by Bathory, only accelerated into a blasting, grinding whirlwind of carnage and calamity, and a more contemporary comparison would be Deiphago, only Coerce Creed is less loosely structured.

It's fun, like stepping on an insect is fun, or urinating on a public monument when nobody is looking is fun,  but it comes at the expense of the sort of composition that will roll around in your brain like a marble for a few months afterwards. But that's not the point: Coerce Creed is violence personified. Blasted beats in which the kick drums hammer into a blur, the splashes of cymbals and the rifle snare taking control while the rhythm guitars cycle between traditional death/black metal tremolo riffs and more potent chord progressions, and no bass guitar to be heard anywhere. I wouldn't have minded that deeper end presence to flesh out the destruction a little better, but this band shifts through so many cacophonous riffing passages in so short a time that you're not going to care much, as long as the layered rasps continue to rave their nihilistic paeans to the war metal pantheon. I'm pretty sure we can guess which of the Four Horsemen visited these mens' dreams one night, if titles like "Ruination Conquest" and "Eradication Conquest" don't give it away, but from the sound of it he not only offered them direction, but a stable of steeds to ride unto apocalypse, and these five tunes are the sounds of those infernal destriers neighing and galloping and trampling, crashing against the gates of Heaven until every bone in their equine bodies is shattered.

Incendiary imagery, indeed, but I feel it really well describes just what you're signing up for when you spin this MLP. To Nechbeyth's credit, they do offer a few 'breathers' in there, like the "Intro + KSMT Oath" which opens with with a martial/ritualistic ambient sequence and then thunders into a slower instrumental with lots of drums and open chords, or the closer "Lynch Directive" that flows along with some grooving Celtic Frost/Darkthrone chords before tearing your skin off. In listening, I definitely felt myself wanting for a few more atmospheric tinges, like atonal, frightening melodies, sporadic leads that erupt with no sense of logic or direction, or harsher walls of ambient noise threaded directly into the meat of the riffing; but that's not so much to fill any 'void', since this is an incredibly kinetic release. It's more that I felt at places it could have used an even further sense of bewildering chaos. The riffs themselves are suitable to the speed and style, but not exactly standout on their own merits...we've heard this before, basically. As it stands, though, Coerce Creed is a solid war bastard metal record, sounds tighter than the debut record (Blood.Axis.Domination), which bites off no more or less than what the trio initially promises: a thermonuclear racket of riffing prowess and harsh, grating apocalyptic poetry. Shiva on a bad hair day. You'd better duck.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10]

https://www.facebook.com/nechbeythwarcult

Bloodbath - Unblessing the Purity EP (2008)

Unblessing the Purity was the first release in a busy year for the Swedish all-star death metal project Bloodbath, which alone would have made up for the four-year hiatus since Nightmares Made Flesh, but I'm happy they didn't just stop here. Four tunes, and a superior short-player to their original Blessed Death EP in both composition and effectiveness, really refining this group's ability to draft a death metal tune with some depth and melody that celebrates the original influences to which they pay homage, without proving too much of a direct ripoff of any of their countrymen/forebears. After hearing this, I was extremely stoked for The Fathomless Mastery, which did not disappoint, and it's yet another reason I actually wish Bloodbath was 'mainlined' by its constituent members, instead of being this project that gets shelved for large periods of time (the current hiatus having lasted around five years). Then again, if they were churning out discs annually or bi-annually, they might not be so good...but they don't seem to have come close to exhausting their riff stores yet.

Anyway, Bloodbath might lack a little in the creative department, and that was the point since inception, but the amount they are called out for it seems quite disproportionate when one considers that their most vocal detractors spend about 50% of their time listen to direct knockoffs of early 90s black/death metal. It's okay to do when you're on some smaller cult label and pulling in audiences of 15 at a gig, but not when you're a member of Opeth or Katatonia! Rrrrriight, and let's not forget, forming in 1998, Bloodbath were already well ahead of the game, in some cases only 5-6 years after the records they were worshiping! Sure, there isn't a lot here that you wouldn't have already heard on a Dismember, Carnage, Hypocrisy, Entombed, Edge of Sanity or Necrophobic record over a decade before this, but Unblessing the Purity doesn't seem so much like recycling as rekindling its beloved influences. You'll immediately notice a more mature structure to the songwriting which doesn't seem like a repeat of Resurrection Through Carnage or Nightmares Made Flesh, with a busier use of melody as an atmospheric ingredient (as in "Weak Aside"). The rhythm guitar tone isn't quite so concentrated on being ripping and raw in the traditional Sunlight fashion, but dialed back a little in the mix, which fits the more intricate picking of a lot of riffs here. I've heard this material described as more 'technical' than the prior albums, and that's not a false statement, but it's not to the degree where they're exploring the clinical/tech-death brutal death metal indulgence...this is very firmly old school death metal, it just doesn't settle for being so simple that it borders on stupid.

Guitars, guitars! Tunes like "Blasting the Virginborn" really capture a lot of versatility, from the unapologetic Krisiun blasting of the opening riff to the death & roll grooves and bluesy but cryptic lead passages, while others like "Sick Salvation" seem like they're just dowsed in an added dimension of constant atmosphere being provided through the reverb on the drums and guitars. There are a lot of chug-to-trill rhythms that are redolent of Cannibal Corpse's cult favorite The Bleeding, and Mikael also seems to channel a little of Napalm Death's direct vocal gruffness in places. Not every riff is a winner, but the majority of them fit together snugly and constantly offer the ear something fresh and potentially unexpected. Renkse's bass lines sound better here than I think I've ever heard them before (at least in this band), with a balanced distortion to them that never seems over the top, but keeps them heavy and grating against the clearer presence of the rhythms. Axenrot sounds fucking unbelievable, especially on a lot of the slower grooves where's he complementing the central rock beat with faster double bass and then seamlessly introducing blasts and breaks. But really, Bloodbath always thrive off their guitars more than anything; both Blakkheim and Dan Swano's replacement Per 'Sodomizer' Eriksson (Katatonia, Genocrush Ferox) deliver constantly thrills.

The ambient touches, like at the close of "Mouth of Empty Praise" with the male chant, are well enough implemented that I'd have enjoyed hearing a lot more of them, and the lyrics, while often minimalistic, are pretty blasphemic as a rule here..."Blasting the Virginborn" calling out Christian falsehoods, and "Mouth of Empty Praise" offering lip service to a number of infernal figures. Almost to the point where it feels like there is a more cohesive concept happening than your usual Bloodbath record, which happens to reflect the cover artwork quite well. It's not perfect, but just fucking great, well-rounded death metal that I enjoy time and time again, like anything else they released after Breeding Death, and if you've been on the fence due to not liking the higher profile bands of several of the members, trust me when I say this is probably much more your style. In fact, I like Bloodbath more than anything Opeth has released since Blackwater Park, and even a number of the Katatonia offerings, so I really do wish they'd put out something more often...even if they don't reach the level of productivity achieved in 2008. Anyway, Unblessing the Purity is killer and just as worth owning as any of the full-length efforts.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10] (insurrection displayed)

http://bloodbath.biz/

Bloodbath - The Wacken Carnage (2008)

Popular bands = lame. I get it. Bands made up of dudes from various popular bands = DOUBLE LAME. Loud and clear! Just wanted to get that out of the way for all the closet trolls up front, and then to deliver a nice swift FUCK OFF! If you've written off Bloodbath for this reason, it's not my loss, because there's nothing more or less here than a group of skilled musicians & friends having a great time paying tribute to a style of music they love, that gave most of them their start, and writing some damn catchy tunes in the process. 2008 was a particularly great year to follow the Swedish 'supergroup', not only for two new studio recordings (The Fathomless Mastery and Unblessing the Purity), but also because they would unleash a pretty goddamn great sounding live album. In fact, I would not be exaggerating to claim this was one of the better produced and paced live sets I've heard on CD from any band in the genre...

There is the caveat that this was a little late in coming, recorded back in 2005 at Germany's metal Mecca and then mixed in 2008 for release, but it sounds just as effective in 2014. There are also the limitations most of these recordings present, in that you'll have to use your imagination to picture the band on stage, but you do also get a DVD included for when you're not listening to it in the car...thus The Wacken Carnage is already one step ahead of many of its peer releases. In fact, I doubt I'll ever purchase another live album which offers anything less than this very format, even if if sounds as fantastic as this one does. Now, this was the 'classic' Bloodbath lineup, with Mikael of Opeth handling the vocals, Blakkheim/Swanö on guitars, Renkse on bass and Axelrot on drums, so if you're not into Åkerfeldt's growling in comparison to his later replacement on Nightmares Made Flesh, I can understand some hesitation on hearing that material, but trust me when I say that the guy sounds fine and it makes little difference. What really took me by surprise was just how pungent and fuzzed out the guitars here sounded, just as much as either of the earlier studio albums and they frankly sound as clean as a studio overdub...to the credit of the band's stage techs and the mixers and engineers who worked on the final product. I suppose it's so thick and consistent that there lacks some dynamic range through the performance, but it's not necessarily a band I approach with that in mind...

Granted, the band had a limited amount of material to work with at the time, only the debut EP and two full-lengths under their belt, but they compact it all down to a 13-track extravaganza with nary a stinker in the lot. Even the Breeding Death material, which I consider their weakest, gets a nice injection of life, and it's represented in its entirety, with the rest of the set leaning more heavenly on Nightmares than Resurrection Through Carnage (sensible, that was their 'current' album for the performance), six choices from the former and three from the latter. There are some pretty glaring omissions, like "Year of the Cadaver Race" which has some of the best riffing they've ever written hands down, but I'm not complaining about what they muster up, and tunes like "Outnumbering the Day" and "Eaten" are practically worth the price alone. The drums pop right atcha, the guitars richer than hi-fiber oatmeal, the vocals pretty nihilistic and blunt though I can't say much for Mikael's on-stage personality (even when I've seen him with Opeth). Jonas doesn't develop much of a presence through the recording, but then even on their studio albums the bass is subordinate to the rhythm guitars so it wasn't like I expected much more. The tremolo melodies also don't stand out very much, often as gloomy as the chords, but these are really the only production issues and it's still vastly superior to most live sets I've seen or even heard from festivals...

The DVD is a little better yet, because you can see the guys traipsing around in their blood-spattered whites, but it's more impressive just that they're actually playing as tightly as the audio translates. I'm just used to hearing more flaws in a performance, but then it's probably not the most difficult material to reproduce for any of the involved parties. If you DO like randomness, jamming, inconsistencies, then admittedly this might not be for you, and if you hate Bloodbath to begin with then it goes without saying, but I have no regrets about any of the purchases of their stuff I made that year, and if you're down for some punchy throwbacks to the sounds of Dismember, Entombed and Unleashed in the early to mid 90s which don't sound as if they were recorded in a latrine, then these guys come immediately to mind. Nothing new or original, but they can write a goddamn riff that I'll remember 5 years later. Hell, 10 years. The Wacken Carnage isn't a purchase I'd make over any of the three studio full-lengths, but unlike some live recordings, I did feel that you got what you actually paid for.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

http://bloodbath.biz/

Asphyx - Deathhammer (2012)

Deathhammer was one of those records which exploded upon arrival, seemingly all that anyone could talk about for a couple weeks, and seemed to reap in a lot of incredibly positive press. Occasionally mislabeled a 'comeback effort' (people must short motherfucking memories), it was the natural successor to Death...the Brutal Way and saw Asphyx once again dowse a pretty average set of riffs into a raw, phenomenal production aesthetic that dramatically increased their mileage. It's not a far cry in style from either of the first two Hail of Bullets records, to the point that I feel like the shared members must get confused when putting together their respective set lists, but where the riff progressions and grim, war-themed concept there really seem to come together for me, Deathhammer felt like it suffered from a bit of 'leftover syndrome'. That's not to say it's an album entirely without merit, because there's a genuine, hellish energy running through a lot of the track list that pairs up well with some of the more concise tunes, but considering how much buzz this had when it dropped like a bomb, I expected a whole lot fucking more...

Instead, it's basically a set of fairly traceable, predictable riffs descended not only back to the Dutchmen's own cult classics (Last One on Earth, or the unsung On the Wings of Inferno), but also Bolt Thrower muscle, early Death-like tremolo passages, Hellhammer chords and grooves, and there were even a few riff and vocal patterns (like "Deathhammer") where I kept thinking back to classic Slayer. There are a lot of samey songs throughout the album, in particular the faster 2-3 minute pieces, but these are fairly well contrasted to the slower, drudging chug or doom/groove fests such as "Der Landser", or "Minefield" which seemed like a mashup of Asphyx with Celtic Frost at points. Alas, I found the general rule here was that the slower the riffs moved, the more bare bones and boring they would become, to the point that several are really just 1-2 chords or notes bouncing around in repetition. Clever, but you're not the fucking Ramones! As a result, every time I felt energetically charged by this material, it would prove all too short lived...I'm fine with variation, I just wish that all the content, faster and slower, involved more creative rhythms and note choices which could keep me guessing. This is an effort that honestly seems to get by largely for the fact that the production of the guitars and vocals sounds monstrous, and that's a trend I've noticed a lot lately with many of the umpteeth-generation Swedish-sounding bands and Autopsy/Incantation hybrids...the 'sound' trumps the 'structure'.

But, hey, that's what a lot of death metal fans want, and it's not always a bad thing. An audience once hooked on expansion, experimentation and extremity seems to have settled into a desire for the familiar and inoffensive. I'm not entirely exempting myself from this, since I'm pretty evenly into both the old school and tech/death sides of the death metal medium, but I've always been about the songs first, and no matter how formulaic or 'sure bet' these entries to the Asphyx legacy were, I simply could not be bothered to remember them a mere 2-3 weeks after the album came out. Perhaps I was a little burned out after Of Frost and War, Death...the Brutal Way and On Divine Winds had come out, and this album didn't offer much more than reruns, but even listening to it now with a fresher perspective hasn't aged it very well. Tunes like "Into the Timewaste", "Deathhammer" and "The Flood" are all pretty decent, and I can't help but enjoy that fulfilling guitar tone, the vice-like potency of Bob Bagchus' drums, or even the simplicity about which they conceive a few of the riffs; but I always felt it lacked some of the emotive, crushing power of other recent recordings by some of the same members, and there were many times I wished the notes had just gone off in some other direction than taking the pretty bland, ordinary route that they do...

I don't wanna be too hard on Deathhammer, because it is indeed a successful enough record due to the production and presentation. I certainly like this as much as The Rack, or either of their mid-90s albums with the fragmented lineups. Most of the lyrics are solid, except "Deathhammer" itself which is a pretty typical 'get off my lawn' sort of thing where, you know, only the TRUE death metal bands rule and everyone else is a poseur just obviously in it for the money! That's right, dudes, tune in to next season of MTV Cribs where we'll get to tour the mansions and estates of chart-busting brutal death metal bands... A few of the lyrical themes feel a little redundant with the more consistently conceptual wartime accounts of Hail of Bullets, but Asphyx did it earlier. I also thought this was one of, if not the best cover arts Axel Hermann did for this band, and the Dan Swanö mix does a superb job at capturing that raw, visceral thrill of Last One on Earth and catapulting it forward 20 years, which, when you think of it, really seems to be the point of the whole album. Yet, there are some pretty 'meh' tunes throughout, in particular the pair from the Reign of the Brute EP fuckery early in the year, and this is just nowhere near the level I would have expected from the early excitement I experienced surrounding its release. It's great to hear a veteran metal band like this forging on in the new century, but I'd prefer they tried to surpass themselves rather than just play 'catch up' to where they already were at a younger age, and this doesn't quite do that beyond the advancements and availability in/of studio wizardry.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (if you won't face death we will)

http://www.asphyx.nl/