Archives: Reviews

1 - A Yellow Symbol 2 - Erase Head 3 - No Way Out 4 - Mass Raped Hammer 5 - Neurotic 6 - Wreck 7 - Psychopathicolorspectrum 8 - Excellent

On the presentational level, Alienation Mental does it quite good. The booklet and multimedia tracks contained in the Cd are chock full of hyper technological cyberpunk stuff. Hexagonal maps and green shades of circuitry and microscope details ans so on. They did it much better than Ingrowing always struggled to do anyway, flying on the lines of latest Meshuggah on both lyrics and aestethics, with a smirk of irony which Eastern Europeans cannot live without (the cover art is a detail of their rehearsal room). And well, the music is also sharp and skillfully executed, with some riminiscences of Napalm Death in that era when they decided to introduce Industrial elements (“Fear Emptiness…”/”Diatribes” period). But in the end this stuff becomes so soporific I can barly stand it until the end. The drummer is still a powerhouse, but I preferred the whole music when they still were purely grindcore. The spoken vocals have always been something that disturbed my nerves. And the chug Nu-metal influences hit me mood very badly. The vocals are guttural and deep, but the song structures are all centred around the heaviness of, say, Dying Fetus with some extra technical twist. They’re just 100% Death Metal now, with an extra technical edge. They do it good, but I don’t like the music, I am afraid. They laos have a problem with English language, how do you supposedly “rape” a hammer?

1 - Exist! 2 - Exist! (radio excerpt) 3 - Exist!

Come on, was this stuff recorded with any seriousness in mind? A 32 minute song makes up the entire album with among the most stupid, basic riffs I have heard in a lot of years. Seems almost to hear Clawfinger or some 80’s pop/rock band with a sore throat. The first minutes are just a bunch of choruses with a 3 note chugs deign of the best Slipknot. The fact that my promo comes with a 2:41 excerpt for radio broadcast might be somehwat indicative. The singer is quite mediocre, this guy is just speaking in the mic with a barely noticeable distortion, and the whole textures are as open as a slowed down Jane’s Addiction. I know there is a lot of -phylosophical thoughts – behind this band, but If this is the future of Black Metal, I do not want to see it. If the lyrics were so important, publish them on your fucking website or where everyone could read them. I heard other horrendous bands from the Osmose roster, but this one is really cheap. Ask me if I care at all if the guy behind this project drew the cover artwork for Dark Throne‘s last single. There is even spoken French (this guy’s from Quebec) to add more gloss to the cake. This stuff is as easy listening commercial as Christian Aguillera. Puah.

1 - Final Exterminacion 2 - Impostor 3 - Masturbation Divina 4 - Reencarnacion 5 - Satanica Premonicion 6 - Sentencia de Sodoma 8 - Misa Negra

Hearing a band coming from Bolivia, with a female singer and a logo drawn by mr. Neyra was almost a guarantee something savagely satanic to come. Bestial Black Metal at its best, one would hope. The cover artwork too is also so goddamn superb, highly detailed and with dozens of skulls and corpses offered as sacrifice to a huge goat skull. Then why exactly why I do not manage to be as impressed as I’d like to be? The sound here is okay, if a bit too polished, some more filth wouldn’t have damaged the onslaught of the South American lust almost all bands from there seem to share. The vocals are possessed and raucous, but we’re a bit far from the unbounded bestiality of a insane screamer like old Laura Bravo (Nuclear Death). The weak spot might be the very riffs, maybe a tidbit too classic metal and scholastic, it seems as if all the musical elements here have been a bit tamed down following precise structures and simple, classic riffs. While there might be some potential coming out, this is good but defintely not outstanding. Thanksfully we haven’t got stupid raspy screams and “cold” chord progressions, but we’re a bit far from the massacre of cults like Bazzah, Proclamation or Goat Semen. Some more dirt is needed, and a bit more dissonance and musical deviation in songwriting could make the whole good shit emerge from here. An Lp version limited to 366 has been released by Crush Until Madness rex from France.

1 - Apeirophobia 2 - Pitch Black 3 - Die as I say 4 - Begin to Bleed Through 5 - Means to an End

I don’t know exactly what a rellik is, but this bands plays for sure among the finest examples of Bay Area Thrash Metal I have heard recently. Nothing that hits me like like it did in the ’80s (honestly speaking, I don’t believe that anything recorded today would have the same feel, it might be I am just a different person now), but there is a lot of grrove and intensity going on here. I admit my first interest in hearing this band came from the fact that Craig Smilowski beats the skins here (he played drums with Immolation and Goreaphobia), but there is definitely more to hear: a really impressive, huge guitar sound (a sound that would fit Sick of It All or Blood for Blood), metallic bass lines, hectic and creative drum tempos, and a lot of metal galloping and sane Thrash Metal headbanging. What saves the band is probably the vocals which are not too clean, not too deep, just the right kind of raspy, impish style which reminds maybe a bit of early Kreatoror Razor (but you could name almost any other band here). Compared to other disastrous attempts such as Soulless or Defaced which I heard since the new Thrash explosion hot the new millenium (thank you, Bewitched), this Ep shines silver (gold might be too much). It has force and not a sign of wimpy gay vocals or boring Metal rides. Old school worship done with cognition.

1 - City Of The Living Dead-Antropomorphia [1-10 Kix Fes, Veghel-Holland 24-6-89] 2 - Parracide 3 - Echoes Of Death 4 - Subordinate To The Domination 5 - Commandments 6 - Out Of The Body 7 - Chemotherapy 8 - Cycle Of Existence 9 - Suspended Animation 10 - The Trauma 11 - Antropomorphia [Bochum-Germany, 18-11-88] 12 - Parracide 13 - Subordinate To The Domination 14 - Cycle Of Existence 15 - Extreme Unction 16 - Chemotheraphy 17 - Bacterial Surgery 18 - Systematic Instruction 19 - Consuming Impulse [Unreleased]

Consider that for me Pestilence is like mom, apple pie, and country put together. They’re really one of the greatest bands of all times, and this time we have 2 live shows 2 from their best days (1988 and 1989) on a single, official Cd. The sound of these shows is way clearer than I hoped for, I really have heard much worse during my tape trading days. Classics like “Parricide” and “Chemo Theraphy” are enough to make me cum till blood gushes out of the slit. There is really not much to add becouse no sane person would start describing how Pestilence sound like, they’re just one of those bands that were already there before time was created – add the energy of the best thrash of the 80’s, the best vocalist of all times after Chris Reifert, and a huge dose of “IT”, and you get close to what Pestilence stands for in this Kali Yuga of Death Metal music that’s 2000. I cannot really tell much more becouse I know the songs so well I could sing them along (ehe) so I have no idea if you could understand finely both the recordings. The tracks from 1988 are put last and are somwhat more foggy and lower in recording, but if possible have even more evocative power. The bonus tracks is officially unreleased and it’s called “Consuming Impulse”, even if it’s an instrumental, you could clearly feel the touch of their earlier works. Top notch release, get it while you can. The booklet is a bit meager, just 1 folding sheet, but this time the label has been generous with flyers, posters and pictures, there is a collage with dozens of details every fucking where, including the back of the tray. 78 minutes and 11 seconds full of history.

1 - Confrontation 2 - Downsized 3 - System Of The Animal 4 - Closure 5 - Purging The Nemesis 6 - Day One 7 - Unscathed 8 - G.F.Y.S.

I read Pyrexia recently released a collection of old material, a kind of “best of” which might be one of the most insanely nonsense things a band could ever do. But to me their best stuff came out with this “Sytem of the Animal”, an album that has a HUGE dose of slam without being boring baggypant rapcore shit. This is an album that touches a few really hot topics that might have become even more sensitive after the tragedy of 9/11, the album opens with the words of the mad racist black preacher Louis Farrakhan, that decretes white man guilty of living in this world (reminds me of a Minor Threat song). I won’t go into comments about these ideas here, but the point is that this band is conscious about the stuff they write and you feel a surge of hatred out of Keith DiVito’s vocals right into the speakers. There is only one weak song in the whole Cd and it’s the song “Closure” which has lame riffs and lamer lyrics, but the rest is a real powerhouse. The vocals are a bit more throaty than guttural, but the guitars have the crunch of Skinless and Suffocation combined. This is not the Death Metal for those only into Necrovore and Morbid Angel, but it has a lot of power nonetheless. The riffs are a real bullodzer.
As a personal note, I’d like to state that there was this nice longsleeve shirt on the booklet of this Cd that could be ordered from Mockery productions (supposedly the very band) and I sent USD 23.00 with a money order to get it but have yet to receive my longsleeve to this day. 9 years seems a bit too much even for Italian post.

For those who might be interested in this Trivia, the label was run by Jacob of Invocator.