Black Metal History Month- Revenge :'Violation.Strife.Abominate"

 

The bar is low for these guys. Their last album scored a 6.5. A six is the lowest score that can be considered listenable. They were really heavy, but not the best songwriters; however, if you were into grind-core sprinkled with blackened rawness, it might have been something you would give a shot. Things are more frantic and feral this time around, but not as heavy, thanks to the thin guitar tone that carries a reckless buzzing to the otherwise punk frenzy going down here. I don't remember the drums sounding this bad last time. "Flashpoint Heretic" is just chaos from the onset and sounds like they recorded themselves throwing their equipment down the stairs and overdubbed the meaningless screaming over it afterward. 

When the last album came out I was not into grindcore as much as I am now. But I really loved the last Full of Hell album, which combined black metal with grindcore in a more cohesive fashion, proving you can still be insanely heavy and write a fucking song. The drummer makes more of an attempt to do so three songs in. The vocals work to thwart his trying in this regard. To fight back he goes into a blast beat. There are some lower growls, and the way the vocals are distorted at times brings early Today is the Day to mind. I am a little concerned when I see I have to endure nine more songs of this. Despite the vocals, there seems to be more form and function to "Strife Invocation".  They throw themselves into a crude punk thrashing for "Emaciated Revelation" 

The crude patter of the drums plays against any potential "Mercy Revoked" has, at best felt like early Deicide, but without the hook to the riffing. "Piety Vaporized" falls in line with the conceptual theme. The song itself is a spastic battery of sound.  "Shockwave Iconoclast" is more of the same rapid-fire temper tantrums. "Last Resort" is sadly not a Poppa Roach cover. "Aftermath" blasts by with little attempt to catch my attention. But then, when I do pay attention to "Liars Rope" the results are not much better. The last song starts off with a more deliberate pound. I'll give this one a 6, as the production might not grate on the nerves of their fans, who are the only ones who will appreciate this album. For some reason, Season of Mist is invested in these guys.  

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Gravesend : "Gowanus Death Stomp"

 This is the second album by the New York band who is aspiring to capture the dark underbelly of the city in their music. This trio bashes out crushingly heavy music that could be blackened death metal, with grind core tendencies. They lash out on the second song with a more feral fury than they did on the first song. It is a powerful sonic statement, but I am hoping that heavy is not the only tool at their disposal , because I will be bored by the next song if the dynamics do not shift. Most of these songs do not break the three minute mark so it is not like this kind of assault' is being dragged on. There is more of a death metal buzz to the riff leading into "Festering in Squalor". 

There is a more thrashing feel to "Code of Silence". The vocals stay at the same dry mid ranged rasp. It is produced in a raw that sounds like it's coming from a blown p/a speaker. When they let the riffs groove a bit it works in their favor. The title track kind of works off a similar groove, it almost sounds like the same song. It feels like a great deal of this album is about being homeless. "Streets of Destitution" finds more double bass hammered atop everything , but they attack you in a very similar manner as they did at the beginning of the album. "Make Bones" is another one that blasts at you in a more frantic grind core like manner than black metal. Though they do tap into a more blackened feel with the sonic charge of "Crown of Tar". Yes, it's intense, but not breaking any new ground in songwriting for the genre.

At this point in the album the rule around here that "cool riffs alone does not a good song make" hits hard, as that is all that really separates "30 Caliber Pesticide' from the previous song. Though it is more than the rush grind-core riff propelling "the Third Rail" has to offer. "Mortsafe" makes more out the riffs for the gut wrench death metal it offers. But the vocals are very monotonous at this point . They go into a blasting mode that forces me to go back and give another listen to "Lupara Bianca" in order to hear what happened. "Carried By Six" is another round of raw feral gnashing of teeth that explodes in another flurry of motion. Their drummer is a monster as someone playing this sort of thing would have to be, and is perhaps the most redeeming aspect of their sound. Things slow to a doomy pace midway into the song but it is too little too late.  I will give this album a 7, the vocal grate on me after time , but they have a impressive sound that is dense and dark. 20 Buck Spin is dropping this in late October. 

Portrayal of Guilt : "Devil Music"

At first, you might be fooled into thinking this is a more straightforward metal album, at least until you get to "Burning Hand" which has the atmosphere and dissonance that you might have come to love from these guys. They do however open up the album with some solid grooves. There is less black metal menace or grindcore explosions, but it still works. There is an abundance of chaos, as the drummer attacks the riffs. The second song has some interesting guitar sounds. Odd angular spaces let in strange places. They lock this into a solid grooving head bobbing riff. Almost a Helmet or nu-metal sense of movement. The vocals stay at a scornful rasp. While he is a wild man, the drummer is really making himself felt on this album. 

"Where Angels Come to Die" is one of the first songs that strikes me as black metal, Though I have not always thought of these guys as a black metal band, but as a band influenced by it. They do throw in a creepy middle section into the song, and deliberately make things stompy, before embracing the blast beats, which has not always been their thing. The title track finds things delving even further into darkness. The percussion takes on a more industrial crunch. That is before they blast off into a cosmic abyss. We are very much supportive of any excursions into an abyss here. The lyrics are spat out in a manner that you can understand he is exclaiming that he wants to watch you suffer and feel your pain. This is beautiful. When I read the lyrics on their Bandcamp it painted another picture, one that seemed to use BDSM as a metaphor perhaps, this may or may not be for the devil but either way it feels like the band is their inner darkness. 

The plot twist comes after the title track where they take the same five songs they originally presented and discard the guitars. They replace the metallic sounds with string, and are darker in so doing. 'One Last Taste of Heaven " is too close to call, if pressed which version is better. I think the unnerving dissonance is given a more chilling sensation on the string rendition of "Untitled". It reminds me a little of Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum. The spoken vocals that were buried in "Burning Hand' are given more focus in the new arrangement of the song.  "Where Angels Come to Die" is stripped of the black metal sounds, leaving the scowling vocals to be exposed in their hateful intentions. The guitars raging around the title track pounded the point of the lyrics home with more conviction in the original version. I am only rounding this down to a 9, due to the fact I would prefer five more songs, but feel their experiment was successful and a bold artistic statement, now with that out of their system hopefully another full-length waits in the wings?