Wrust - Intellectual Metamorphosis review for Metal4Africa.com

I recently contributed a review to Metal4Africa.com of Intellectual Metamorphosis by Botswanan death/groove metallers Wrust. Go here to read the review: http://metal4africa.com/reviews/wrust-intellectual-metamorphosis-review/.

Grave - Endless Procession of Souls review

 Artist: Grave

 Album: Endless Procession of Souls

Website: https://www.facebook.com/GraveOfficial?ref=ts

Grave hail from Sweden, which is known for the Gothenburg death metal sound. In Endless Procession of Souls, Grave has released an album with a production unusual for Swedish death metal. It has a raw, slightly muffled production. The raw sound doesn’t mean the album is poorly produced; instead, it gives the album character and grit, and has a timeless feel to it. (Warning: I could not resist using many graveyard/death-related similes and imagery in this review.)

The distorted, grim riff of Intro – Dystopia sets the scene perfectly for the rest of the album. Amongst Marble and the Dead continues the grim atmosphere, gloom-laden guitars. The pace switches between thrashy and almost funereal. The vocalist sounds like he was resurrected from the grave; his voice has a desiccated and decayed sound to it. These vocals suit an album that kept me mentally wandering around a misty, forgotten graveyard filled with the sadness of hundreds while I listened.

Irresistible grooves abound – I found it very hard to keep still during this album; some part of me was always moving, either a foot or my head. Disembodied Steps, Passion of the Weak and Encountering the Divine are examples of the groovy goodness. In contrast to the grooves are slower passages which give the listener a breather, and add variety to the songs.

Besides the vocals, the guitars also contribute significantly to the graveyard atmosphere. The bubbling sounds they produce most of the time remind me of thick, primordial tar pits, the graveyards of many hapless animals. At other times, there are solos which sound like chants, solos which scream and then end on droning notes and ones which sound like the moans of lost souls. Winds of Chains goes big on the spookiness, with wind and clinking chains effects in the intro. The droning riffs on Encountering the Divine are full of despair.

The fast drum parts are uncompromising and come down upon the listener in a downpour of acid rain. The slower parts are well controlled. The drums gallop on Plague of Nations and Epos. The latter two tracks also feature standout bass guitar work – Plague of Nations has one of the most sinister (if not the most sinister) bass lines I’ve ever heard, while the bass solo on Epos is saturated with foreboding. Epos ties the beginning and end of the album together very well, with a similar riff to Intro – Dystopia. The former has a clear feeling of finality and despair; Intro was the funeral bell, and Epos is the final spade of dirt on the coffin.

Before I heard Endless Procession of Souls, I hadn’t heard any of Grave’s material before. I am very much encouraged to seek out more of their discography; hopefully their other work matches the high calibre of this album, which I feel is one of 2012’s most impressive death metal releases.

Bloodbeast - Bloodlust review

Upon my first listen of Bloodlust, the debut album from Pretoria death/groove metal band Bloodbeast, I felt like I was listening to the aural equivalent of being slowly squashed beneath a rock. This is a good thing in my book! Bloodbeast is a young band made up of South African metal veterans. The lineup includes members from the well-regarded bands Architecture of Agression, Bile of Man, as well as Fuck the Corpses.

Visceral Birth, a track made up of only strange sounds, begins Bloodlust. Out For Blood then arrives to squash the listener into pulp. Both the chorus and the clean riffs are earworms. The vocals sound menacing, yet they are intelligible, which is something I don't hear often. Sinister bass and crunchy rhythm guitar riffs add to the might of this track. Headbang-inducing grooves appear in parts of Merciless. A blistering solo features in this track. The lead guitar work on this album strikes a balance between simplicity and musical embellishment, as well as having a no-nonsense sensibility about it. On the war-themed Sadeye SNAFU, the guitar solo adds to the unstable atmosphere. As on Butcher for pleasure, the solos are clean, which helps to balance out the heaviness of the other insturments. The solo on Fuck or die also adds to the atmosphere of the song, with its haunting tone.

I found the latter song to be the most visceral and disturbing track on the album. If a band can create a song that makes me feel an almost tangible emotion, even if that emotion is negative, then I consider the song to be good. Fuck or die is about rape, and written from the rapist's point of view. This chilling content made me want to hide inside for the rest of the year. The music video for this song opens with a terrible statistic - that a female born in South Africa is more likely to be raped than learn to read. The great riffs and aforementioned haunting guitar solo add to the song's quality.

'Old school' is a good description for the sound of Bloodlust. The production reminds me of bands such as Death and Obituary. The crunchy, pressing sound fits perfectly on the album, and adds to the songs without sounding muffled. Bloodbeast bring the groove to most of the album; I can imagine that these songs would induce a good deal of headbanging when played live. Bloodlust is a thoroughly enjoyable concrete slab of brutal death metal, a subgenre which can stray into unpleasantness if a band tries to be 'brutal' for the sake of it. Bloodbeast avoid this, and strikes a great balance between melody and brutality.

A Walk With the Wicked - Architects of Sadism review

 Along with the Crow Black Sky review, this one has been sitting in my notebook for ages. Both reviews have finally emerged from their paper prisons.

A Walk With the Wicked have established themselves as one of South Africa’s best metal bands, with their well-executed brand of death-groove metal. The Architects of Sadism EP was released last year. These metal warriors also organised the War at the Warehouse gigs, held in a warehouse in Salt River. The aim of War at the Warehouse was to take metal back to its roots; the bands played on makeshift stages in an unorthodox live music venue.

The Smouldering Remains is a strong opener. Resisting headbanging to the catchy grooves in the chorus is nearly impossible. This song is a regular fixture on my weekly playlists, attesting to its quality and potential to become a modern classic of African metal. There’s something about the lyrics of the chorus: "Nothing will be left/ Burnt into a crisp/ It all goes up in smoke/ This useless life I’ve lived." It feels as though the lyrics have a metaphorical layer to them. Another headbanger chorus arrives with track two, Medical Miscarriage. A few years ago, I’d never have thought that I’d enjoy a song about people being tortured in the name of medicine, but I enjoyed this song because the lyrics don’t give the impression of having gory lyrics just for shock value. The same applies to the lyrics of the title track.

Besides the lyrics, another area where A Walk With the Wicked particularly impresses is the guitar work. Guitarists Matthew Howard-Tripp and Ian Robbins both display their fret board finesse on the album. The standout solos for me were on the tracks Reaching For The Dark and Already Dead, with solos from Howard-Tripp and Robbins respectively. Ancient Servant features a great guest solo from Charles Knighton-Pullin, guitarist of local hair metal band Sabretooth.

Reaching For The Dark, like The Smouldering Remains, has a striking chorus, with the lyrics "And we shall be more than created/ Behind this frail human mask". This track ties with Already Dead as my album favourite. The latter is laden with catchy, yet interesting grooves. Another strong point of Already Dead is its ability to stay focused through the multiple tempo changes. Closing the album is the title track, relentlessly pounding out the last millilitres of the listener’s resistance.

Architects of Sadism is an album which contains equal amounts of catchy grooves, technical brilliance and well-written lyrics. It can definitely be counted as one of the best death metal releases to come out of South Africa in the 2000s.