tisdag 30 december 2014

RECIPROCAL "Order Of The Ages"

A relatively unknown band from USA that combines great musicianship with lyrics about the declination of this world. The cover is terrific with the withered and torn Statue of Liberty.The snakes are about to consume "her". A whole lot of the songs are about conspiracy theories and intros that tells us about the greedy american government and other unpleasent things that occur every day.The intros are the only big flaw on this self funded record. They are far too long and take away the interest of the song. I don´t need 1,5 minutes long intros. The music itself is extremely tight and well performed. Reciprocal can easily compete with any technical death metal band out there. People like to label things, and some people claim this is deathcore. Well I don´t care that much, for me it´s techical and quite brutal death metal. Yes it´s dual voices as in many deathcore bands, but almost no breakdowns at all. I should´t call these guys a clone of hundreds of technical death metal bands, usually I get bored by music that tries to impress the listener, but somehow they manage to keep my interest up through the whole record. What I really like about the record is that Reciprocal don´t play any supermelodic solos or parts of songs. It´s mostly evil sounding music in your torn face. Put away your  Unique Leader stuff, Necrophagist and Spawn of Possession records for a while and listen to this! This band sound sort of like a mix of those bands...

8/10
 

söndag 16 februari 2014

HANDFUL OF HATE "To Perdition"

In some way I have missed this bm band that has been around since 1993, maybe due to lack of promotion and as you all know internet has made the searching for music so much easier nowadays. Anyway I was totally blown away by these bastards. The intensity they deliver is overwhelming and in this kind of brutal headcrushing bm you gotta be able to create an evil atmosphere with scary riffs and a whole lot of attitude. And yes they have the right evil attitude and the skills to play both fast as hell(yes that´s right) and incredibly tight with loads of lightning fast blastbeats. The production that is clear but at the same time gritty really does the music justice. It gives you that punch in the face that you want so badly. They really deliver razorsharp songwriting and great musicianship, there´s not a sloppy moment on this record! Actually the skills of these italians reminds me a lot of their countrymates in Hour Of Penance, though the music isn´t exactly the same, but there are some death metal influences here and there. This band is like a combination of Marduk, Belphegor, Behemoth and a little taste of the just mentioned band HOP. But, and there´s a big "but", these guys have a sound of their own. Actually they kick so much ass, that I HAD to get a shirt of this band. The only flaw I can find with this record is the bassdrums, they are sometimes a little too high in the mix, but that´s just me being very picky.

9/10
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