AHNA : " Perpetual Warfare"

If  this band from Vancouver  let you up enough to gather your thoughts, you might find yourself confused as to what brand of metal if this is metal at all your are listening to. This might just be sludge infested  punk. But if this was a punk band they would not have such a trippy  guitar solo leading you down into their abyss. They grind into "Pull the Trigger" and then jump from blasty punk to driving metal. They are not doom, but can throw in some slower accents to keep you confused. The guitar solos keep coming. When you think it's not blackened anything so why do they have those pentagrams on there Bandcamp page they hit you with a burning tremolo guitar. The drums give the post- apocalyptic war dance similar to that of Reign In Blood. The fuzzed out density of a guitar tone, some times makes you think it's pcp fueled Kyuss. Some times the riffs are even a little angular as they come at you like a drunken pit bull from hell. The lumbering weight taken on in "Cadaver" softens me up to the more straight forward pounding punk parts that I don't normally like, but they do not give them time to grate at me. They twist into an bong laden Sabbath like section.

There is a crusty grit to the overdrive guitar that they did a fantastic job of capturing in a way that leaves little to the imagination as to how they sound live. Drummer Anju Singh must be handling the more punk rock vocals from behind her kit and leaving the more deathly gurgles to the guitarist. She appears more on the front end of the album and the more growled vocals take over the latter half. She is not limited to just punk temper tantrums she can let out some impressive shrieks . The solos add more than you might expect and to some extent bring more of the black metal darkness in the ambiance.

They have an adventurous streak run through the more rock n roll vibe of the opening riff to the title track that closes this 12". This song takes on a more death metal. The rough edged punk recklessness is there, but in many ways it reminds me of Deicide's early demos, until it slows down for them to wade through the caustic bong water. I'll round this up to an 8, even though some of the punk moments aren't my most favorite things in the world, they are well bookended with an original take on genres we have heard smashed together before just not in this fashion. So I commend the originality, the intensity and the weight of the sound they committed to wax. This comes out June 9th, have a listen below. I am looking forward to their upcoming "Crimson Dawn" lp and hearing what they do with a full album's worth of songs.