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Uphill
Battle There
are not many breaks for you to find in this music. For once here is a band
where the name lives up to the music. Or the other way around, if you wish.
From the start this music just blasts ahead. Music from the environs of
hardcore, death and thrash metal with pure hardcore vocals, screaming
angry words at you. The music is performed to the core of perfection,
tight and well-played. It goes fast, is brutal and hurls you through a
technical hell. At sometimes you even get clear references to black metal
and grindcore. But there is no mistake here; it is played with excellence
and stunning accuracy. There is no remorse. I am amazed at the brutality
presented for me. Coming from USA and having one release before this one
and some vinyl singles and a DVD, this is indeed going to be an
interesting project for me since I am going out to get hold of some of it,
for sure. A fine contribution to the collection for people loving hardcore
and development in the genre.
V/A I
strongly assume that the readers of Evilution Magazine are familiar with
Possessed and their importance for death metal, so I will refrain from
writing an introduction to the band and immediately plunge into reviewing Seven
Gates of Horror – A Tribute to Possessed. It is always risky
business to release a tribute album; especially if the bands take the
liberty of interpreting the chosen tracks so that they fit into their own
concept, since it usually leads to a love/hate relationship to the
individual cover songs. That is fortunately not the rule on Seven Gates
of Horror as the involved bands have generally been quite faithful to
Possessed. For the most part, luckily, the contributors to this album are
death metal bands, so there are no really significant experiments. On the
other hand, there is an overall common thread throughout the whole album,
where the most noticeable aspect is the variance in the production quality
of the different tracks. Seven Gates of Horror is on the whole a
decent tribute album, and if you simply need a reason to purchase a copy
of the release, it would definitely be “The Exorcist” performed by
Sadistic Intent and Jeff Becerra! That should be reason enough, but if you
insist on having more I can refer to Pentacle, Absu, Diabolic, Angel
Corpse, Cannibal Corpse and Amon Amarth as merely some of the bands that
have contributed to this record. Bo
Various
Artists
Venomous Concept What the freaking hell is this – another chronologically misplaced Napalm Death-related side project?! Oh, come on... Will this retrogressive craze ever end? Will this itch of the old-school ever die away? And will Shane Embury ever shave off that clownish thatch of frizzy hair? Though the latter is certainly a strong motive for my unfriendly attitude towards this ‘retroactive concept’, there is more to the following critical blitz than mere irrational intolerance. Fact is that this superstar grind-punk outfit (an outrageous oxymoron in itself) tries to communicate a feeling which nine times out of ten remains inextricably linked with the mid-80s. To the untrained ear – and that ear is most certainly mine – Retroactive Abortion is a semi-crusty fusion between militaristic old-school punk à la Discharge and proto-grindcore in the catchy vein of Defecation’s Purity Delusion as well as the ND-groundbreaker Scum. Inside rumour has it that the band moniker is a complimentary paraphrase on Poison Idea, which could well indicate what Embury & his cohorts really strive to be a modern-day facsimile of. But how would I, this know-nothing outsider to the freakish chronicle of punk rock, really be able to confirm that? In strictly structural terms, Retroactive Abortion consists of 16 short and snappy anti-establishment anthems wrapped in a buzz-noise audio mix, whose prominent features are an overly salient bass and the much-distorted vocal lines of ex-Brutal Truth fruitcake Kevin Sharp. And last but not least, partly buried beneath and partly absorbed in that fuzzy wall of sound, we find the enforced two-finger riffs from current Melvins/Fantomas six-stringer Buzz Osbourne, and a drum recording so extremely laid-back and unimaginative its sole function must be similar to that of adhesive tape. Venomous Concept is a bunch of old men in old costumes, and Retroactive Abortion smells a little bit too much of ‘rejuvenation treatment’ for me to remain attentive for its full 27 minutes of stereo time. Keep the sleeping pills close at hand for this one! MISEREION
Via
Mistica Guess
what, this sounds just like Theatre of Tragedy mixed with The Gathering in
their early days.A high-pitched female vocal supported by male growls,
screams… whatever. I have heard many attempts to sound precisely like
the two bands already mentioned, but this comes closest, having only one
thing in difference … Andy La Rocque-like solos. How unoriginal. I found
this very boring and uninspiring. The music has been heard a thousand
times before, and the vocals have a tendency to become very boring and
nerve-wrecking when you listen to it for a long time.
Wall
Of Sleep In
Hungary, the doom scene has at last succeeded in placing its banner. At
least this band comes from there and it says in the press information that
they’ve got their primary inspiration from Black Sabbath and small parts
from Cathedral. The first time I heard the CD I thought: those guys simply
sat down and listened to Black Sabbath while thinking “this is what we
are going to do”. They have succeeded in it so far and the last track on
the CD is a cover of “The Wizard”. The music consists of very heavy
classic passages known from BS at the time when Ozzy was the front singer.
Actually the music is very good, but very unfortunately the singer does
not quite reach the main level when it all initiates. It shines clearly
through in “The Wizard” and I sometimes thought: no no no no... Well,
it appeals to the kind of people who think that BS is the right way of
playing doom metal.
Yob Imagine
some of the slowest Black Sabbath tracks, joined by the vocalist from the
early days of Metal Church… I bet it would sound like this. How very
fortunate since I like both. This promo contains three tracks, two of them
20 minutes long in average. The first track “Aeons” starts so very
slowly with eerie and shrill vocals turning into long and sinister growls,
all while the slowest 70-like rock’n’roll blasts through your
speakers. The band is a three-piece from Portland, and if you are into
Black Sabbath, St. Vitus and the like, this is surely something worth
checking out.
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