Death is June - Drawn & Quartered : "Lord of Two Horns"

This Washington band emerged from the late 90s and is on the more extreme end of death metal. The hammer had a great deal of blunt force trauma to your ears. The second song is more unrelenting than the first, which is perhaps a miscalculation regarding just how raw, savage, and blitzed out on aggression you can get before it all turns into a blur. The title track finds everything speeding by you until it gets to the guitar solo.  The rule here of "cool riffs alone do not a good song make" hits a band like this, which pivots on the cool riff particularly hard. 

The gurgle of the vocals does not really help much when it comes to songwriting, as everything is colored by the vocal shade of gurgle. Things continue to blur with little dynamics to distinguish them. "Three Rivers of  Poison". They do go off on a tangent with the guitar solo for this song. "Grimoire of Blood" is a blur of buzzing guitars that all run together as the vocals gurgle at random under this. The more deliberate angular lumber of "The Devil's Work is Never Done" works better as a song, as it hooks you into the throb. 

The last sound just pounds away at a more frantic blitz of grime-ridden guitars. In some ways, this is closer to what Cannibal Corpse does, though more sonic, thanks to the allure of the guitar's savagery. I will give this album a 7.5, as I feel like for a band that has been doing this for some time, they should be further along as songwriters.If yo uare just looking a for a band to beat your ear drums into submissions these guys got your for real.  

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