Thing of the Day
A WHOLE LOT OF METAL SHAPED THINGS
December 12th 2010
...that have been lying around with their jagged edges threatening to cut our feet.
ALUNAH
– Call Of Avernus (Catacomb) – Hard-edged superfuzzed riffed-up
psychedelic stoner rock. Find it all there waiting, not a cloud in the
sky, with plenty or warning, a Sabbath riff walks by (followed by
another and another…), this is a good good thing, you can never have
too many Sabbath style riffs walking by when a band does it this well.
Stoner rock bands are ten a penny these day, more of them than passing
wizards, most of them decent enough without ever moving anything that
much that hasn’t been moved already/ Alunah have an extra something
that has them standing out a little from the doomy stoner crowd of
Sabbath riff pilots, of St. Vitus dancers and Orange Goblin botherers.
Laced with Paganish psychedelicish occultish lyrics, with sacrificial
morning dances for Dionysus, with Laguna sunrises, scarlet women, wings
of snow, she can fly over mountains – for it is a ‘she’ delivering
those riffs, as one of the two guitarists, as well as leading things
with her powerfully confident vocal lines - She is Sophie Willet and
she fronts a twin guitar driven four piece who throw out some classic
retro flavoured hard rock. Hard rock that comes drenched in stoner
riffs, with just the right amount of metal rumble, with the all
important galloping tunes and the all round great big bites of the kind
of thing that make birds fall out of the sky…yep, they push all those
stoner rock buttons just right, righteously so, and with a little bit
of extra…
Call of Avernus came out on December 6th on Catacomb Records
www.alunah.co.uk
www.catacombrecords.bigcartel.com
SUBVERSION – Lest We Forget (S.O.R) – Debut album from the six-piece South East of England technical metal crew. Lest We Forget
is atmospheric technical metal laced with brutal outbursts of raging
cram-in-as-many-notes-as-possible while growly ‘singing’ man growls
away like he’s been feasting on broken bottles style thrashy metal –
they got the scatter gun technical metal drums, the stabby riffs, the
look at our technique… and then there’s the melodic bit where the other
shouty-singy man actually ‘sings properly’ and bits of symphonic
keyboards rise from the dust and the fog… You know the score, you’ve
heard it all before; brutal technical metal, atmospheric synths,
contrasting vocal styles, no real sense of space, none of the notion of
less might actually be so much more as they squash in as many notes,
riffs and relentless drum pounding bits in as they can… They may not be
that much in terms of depth or creative thought here, they may just be
churning out yet more extreme thrash brutal technical metal laced with
atmospheric synths, you may want screaming ripped throat man to shut
the flip up by the time he starts screaming again fifteen seconds in to
track four, but hey, there’s no denying Subversion do their chosen
thing extremely well and, if your head is in the right place then
there’s some damn fine (if rather obvious) brutal technical metal here.
There’s also a sign or two in this well produced, well packaged, gook
looking debut album that Subversion could well develop what they have
into something a little more challenging and a little less obvious
sometime soon. One for followers of brutally well played technical
metal only at the moment, the rest of us should sit on the fence and
see what develops.
Least We Forget is out on Subversion Official Records on February 7th
www.subversionband.com
www.myspace.com/svsnband
CONDEMNED
– A Dying Art (Underground Movement/Rundown) – Four piece band with
Belfast, a burbling growling frothing grindcore flavoured death metal
that kind of goes to all the places a million growling frothing
grindcore death metal bands have already been. They do add a healthy
touch of Dillinger Escape Plan to their Cannibal Corpse adventure, and
this is a more than decent, well produced debut album. The cover art is
awfully clichéd, as are most of their riffs, moves and vocal noises,
but hey, they got a little something extra there.
www.myspace.com/condemneduk or www.condemned-uk.com or www.rundownrecords.co.uk or www.underground-movement.net
ZOMBIFIED
– Outbreak EP (GrindScene) – Debut EP from a Belfast five piece who are
happy to call themselves an old school death metal band. You’re not
going to find anything here you haven’t heard before – scattergun
drums, thrashing riffs, all the usual things – the deep in the depth of
his big black boots growling-rumbles that pass for vocals... who know
what frontman Pete Clark is on about: zombies? The price of daffodil
bulbs? Putrid gorification and what Cannibal Corpse are having for
their tea tonight?
Whatever he’s growling and
zombie-yelling about, this is actually a half decent five track set of
first shots. Nothing that gets us raving or drooling and I’m nor sure
how intentional the comedy angle is, but hey, Northern Irish news
announcements about zombies taking over North America aren’t meant to
be taken too seriously are they? A positive shitstorm of riffs and
blastbeats that you’ve heard a thousand times before, deathing away in
traditional style, zombified indeed - a vicious assault of zombified
things you’ve heard a thousand times before. Not that original, not
challenging anything much, do kind of like them and it though, there’s
something wholesomely good about a well played raw and spattered mess
of regurgitated re-fried zombiefied bluuuurgggghhhhh and
glurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgghhhhh fuelled grinding death metal same old same
old… and this is damn good same old zombified death metal regurgitation
wrapped in regulation issue bad (bad) artwork.
Out now. www.grindscene.co.uk or www.myspace.com/zombifieduk
