Black Metal History Month- Tithe :"Inverse Rapture"

 

This band out of Portland is heavy as fuck. They blend death metal and grind core with black metal. The vocals are a coarse scowl. The most notable thing is the slower throb that is the heart of this beast the chaos swirls around. I like that they are not just beating your face in their aggression all the time .This makes it more effective when it comes. Though the first and second song did run together, do to the uniform nature of what they do making it hard to tell where one ended and the other began. They pour on more speed for "Demon' the drums feel like they are racing to keep up with the rest of the band. Not as impressive as the first two songs as it dissolves into metal mush.

"Parasite" also becomes a sonic temper tantrum that invests most of the song's energy in exploding. Then the rein it in a little tempo wise. This is always shifting from riff to riff, like they are falling down the stairs while on acid. "Killing Tree" finds them blasting back into a crustier take on black metal that reminds me of early Withered. Whos is another band that combined many of the same elements, but progressed as a band to make the death metal riffs and the black metal atmosphere work better than what does down here. When things are this angry almost to the point of being hard core it gets hard to hear the darkness . "Luciferian Pathways" also suffers from this though , it should be the album's darkest song. Though the diabolical occult references are primarily because it's the metal thing to do.

The last song pretty much pounds the predictable course of brutality that you have come to expect if you made it this far in the album. There is a more deliberate sludge like nature to some of the pounding here to make it more distinct. But once again this is ground already covered by Withered. When the chords are picked out in this song it adds a darker touch I wish there was more of on this album. I will give this a 7.5, there are pretty solid sections of sound and a couple decent songs as well, it starts strong but their momentum carries them away, but for what they are doing they are good at, and made the album they wanted to make.