Atoj are from Italy. This is their latest EP and they play Hardcore.
Atoj’s music is a combination of abrasive Hardcore and 90’s Mathcore. It’s a gritty and dirty EP that showcases a band who have found a sound they’re comfortable with.
The songs are dynamic and interesting, never allowing the listener to slink into complacency, assuming that they know what the next bit will sound like.
This self-titled EP is well-recorded and even on the rare occasions when the band calm down there’s still a palpable intensity to the tracks.
They remind me of a compendium of the heavy parts of older Poison the Well, the aggressive, angular chaos of some of Zao’s work, the Hardcore know-how of Nora, a smidgen of some older bits of The Dillinger Escape Plan and the angry, non-singing parts of Letlive.
This is the second album by this German Death Metal band.
Ingurgitating Oblivion is for lovers of dissonant, Doom-infected Death Metal replete with dark atmosphere and malevolent sounds. This is for fans of Gorguts, Morbid Angel, Immolation and other purveyors of interesting and atypical Death Metal.
That the band have talent and can play is apparent straight away. Add to this a production that settles nicely around the band like a foggy miasma and songwriting skills that have clearly been honed over time and you have an album that has all of the necessary ingredients for something truly special.
On first listen this is an album that gels together instantly and on repeated spins it merely settles deep into your conscious even more, like a welcome indoctrination. This, of course, assumes that this style of Death Metal is one that you can take; if not then there’s no hope for you really, and you’d be better off with something simpler and easier to absorb.
This is Progressive Death Metal without any trace of pretension. The songs exist not to satisfy the musings of the musicians but to satisfy themselves. They operate purely in their own right and owe nothing to anyone other than their own sense of internal aesthetics.
This really is a first-rate release. The songs have longevity and depth oozing out of them and you know this is going to be an album that you’ll keep returning to in the years to come.
I love music that is a bit different, has something extra to offer; Continuum of Absence definitely has this.
Fans of challenging and interesting Death Metal take note.
Dysnomia are a Spanish Melodic Death Metal band and this is their début album.
Featuring a strong sound and an unexpected level of aggressiveness, Dysnomia quickly make their presence felt.
Their sound has plenty of melodic leads and solos as well as a hearty keyboard accompaniment that adds another layer to their infectious sound.
All too frequently Melodic Death Metal simply means a watered down version of Death Metal, essentially a weakened version of the original. This is not the case with Dysnomia. It’s like they’ve taken the melodic aspect of the genre, wrapped it in some keyboards and catchy songs and somehow managed to retain the savagery of the original style. This gives their sound a very fresh, energetic sheen and I’ve really enjoyed listening to this.
There is also a Black Metal influence to their sound, with the keyboards essentially meaning that they have somewhat of a Symphonic Black Metal slant sometimes. It’s more of an enhancement to their core sound though than a true Blackened Death Metal merging of the two and it plays its part in what I like about the band.
This is a top quality listen. If high octane Melodic Death Metal is your thing then Dysnomia will definitely hit the spot for you.
This is the début album from Technical Death Metal band Ara.
This is Technical Death Metal with plenty of brutality. They may have the required complexity of a band playing this style but they’re not above just lashing out and shredding either.
A good sound means that everything is clear and you can appreciate the tightness of the band. The musicianship is a pleasure to listen to, especially when it’s wrapped up in such a destructive Death Metal package.
The singer has an expressive roar that reminds me of a mix of the singers of Malevolent Creation and Vader. He provides a charismatic focal point for the glistening, polished music.
Complicated riffs seem to lurk just behind the omnipresent drums, winding and striking with impunity. This might not be music that you can easily hum along to but it gets inside your skull regardless. Who knows what damage it’s doing in there?
Even when they take their collective feet off the accelerator they still write interesting riffs that refuse to sit still.
If you yearn for the kind of Technical Death Metal that the likes of Iniquity used to churn out then Ara will be right up your street.
Cold Snap’s latest album World War 3 has rekindled my interest in Nu-Metal in a way that I would have thought impossible in 2015. But here they are nonetheless, playing music that they believe in passionately and making a Hell of a racket in the process….
What’s your name and what do you do in Cold Snap?
My name is Jan and I am singer, lyrics writer, frontman, booking agent, video director and actor 🙂
For those who are unfamiliar with your band – introduce yourself!
I am a theatre, movie and TV actor in Croatia, and I have been singing for Cold Snap from the beginning, in 2003. I oversee the day-to-day management aspects of Cold Snap as well. Cold Snap is something I care about most in my life, and that`s why I want to give my best.
Give us a bit of history to Cold Snap
In 12 years we played more than 300 shows and 3 European tours. We have performed with Suicide Silence, Soulfly, Disturbed, Blind Guardian, Dead By April, Limp Bizkit, Pro-Pain, Ektomorf and many more on many festivals including Wacken Open Air in Germany. We have 3 LP albums and more than 10 high production videos. After 12 years we can finally say that we have a good label backing our band – Eclipse Records!
What are your influences?
Pantera, Machine Head, Korn, Rage Against The Machine, Tool, Slipknot and many more.
What are you listening to at the moment that you would like to recommend?
Maximum the Hormone from Japan, Hactivist from UK, and In This Moment from the USA!
What did you want to achieve with your new album?
We want to share our music with everybody, in essence we are a “live show” band, however it’s also important to get our studio album out to the public. We want to have a bigger fanbase, play bigger festivals, and we want to progress. However, we will play the music that we love, not something that is popular right now. That’s not music, that’s “licking someone’s ass”.
Are you happy with how it turned out?
Yes, we are sure that Eclipse Records is the right label for us and for World War 3. We believe if we continue to cooperate in this way with them, that soon we will have some big news to talk about.
What can you tell us about the lyrics?
My lyrics are about everything that I am living through, all I can think about, all that strikes me, and all that concerns me. All these (mostly negative emotions), I put on paper and together with the other band members, we turn it into music. Topics I enjoy writing about are social, family, political, about the rights of all living beings.
Give us a bit of information on the songwriting process.
We do most of the work together in our rehearsal room. Leo (the guitar player) is the most creative one, he does all the crazy riffs and he brings all of that to rehearsal so we can make it even better. We also share our ideas via e-mail between our rehearsals, inspiring or “provoking” each other so we can be creative when we see each other in person at rehearsal, in other words, practice continues for us even while we are not at practice.
How do you see your songs/direction developing in the future?
We have 3 new songs that we can’t wait to play live. In our new songs we are putting some weird electro sounds and samples that Leo is working on. We have new and faster circle pit moments with breakdowns that will break your neck. Soon we will share some new stuff from our rehearsal room on our You Tube channel…
What’s next for Cold Snap?
This year we will play more than 30 shows in Europe, mostly festivals, we will film a new video for a song “Monster”, so in 2016, we hope that our fans will be able to see us on tour in the United States of America as well!
Solanum and Epi-Demic are both from Canada and both play Crossover Thrash Metal.
Solanum start us off with just under 18 minutes of aggressive Thrash.
Their contribution is underground and sharp, with a sound that wastes no time in ramming home their aesthetic.
This is Old-School, genuine and really rather good. I have a low threshold sometimes for Crossover Thrash, especially when done in a Retro style and I think this is one of the saving graces of Solanum; there’s no Retro nonsense here, just good, old-fashioned Thrashing out.
The other thing which earns them big marks is the fact that they can actually pen a decent song. The riffs are enjoyable rip-fests that tear along the road with the hungry appetite of the biggest gas-guzzler.
Oh, and the singer has a very satisfying bark to him as well.
Solanum have won me over.
Up next are Epi-Demic, with a shorter total duration of 13 minutes.
Epi-Demic are just as raw and intense as Solanum, and like Solanum they too dispense with any of the Retro nonsense and just concentrate on some lovely Old-School Crossover.
If anything, Epi-Demic’s sound is even more underground and aggressive than Solanum. Their riffs have more of a Hardcore feel to them in places too, although they still know how to Thrash it out with the best of them. Indeed, some of the guitar rhythms here are very tasty indeed.
You could pretty much land at any point in any of these songs and hit something good, but I think overall my favourite is Famine, with its combination of sharp, tight riffs and frenetic leads…or maybe Nuclear Dream with its swirly, twisting guitars…there’s a lot of good stuff on these four songs.
The singer has a higher voice than that of Solanum although it’s still aggressively based and hits the right Crossover tone.
So, Epi-Demic have also won me over.
If you’re looking for a quality Crossover release without any of the novelty bollocks then snap this up quickly.
Xibalba are a Death Metal band from the US and this is their third album.
This is heavy, brutal Death Metal that takes Hardcore and Sludge influences to make a monster of an album.
Imagine a Metalcore band that played Death Metal…yes I know that this implies Deathcore, but Xibalba are not a Deathcore band. Xibalba don’t have an easy to categorise sound. Deathcore should cover it, but no; this is a merger of 90’s Hardcore and 90’s Death Metal where Morbid Angel and Madball meet.
Classic Metal songwriting merges with Hardcore fury and Death Metal aggression. These songs really hit the spot for me as they take me back to the mid/late 90’s but translated to the modern day with a crushingly heavy production.
The band’s sound is Hellishly aggressive and recalls lost greats like Merauder and Konkhra if they got their hands on some Obituary and Crowbar riffs.
The vocals are predominantly harsh shouts that straddle the line between Hardcore and Metal, successfully merging the two styles into a vitriolic whole.
Xibalba have a meaty, beefy guitar tone that can squash a tank at 1000 metres. The punishing music perfectly captures the feeling of rolling demolition and hate-fuelled terror. Little snatches of melody appear merely to offset the heavy rhythms so that when these moments of light disappear again the riffs sound even louder and heavier than ever before.
Putrid Offal are from France and this is their début album. They play Deathgrind.
A mere couple of decades or so since they first formed, this début album is long overdue.
The band have a strong modern and professional production that makes their short bursts of carnage sound immense.
I do enjoy a good bit of Deathgrind; I like the winning combination of short, violent music with the added brutal riffing of Death Metal that allows for a bit more depth and variety than some purely Grindcore bands offer. This describes Putrid Offal well as they strike a good balance between the two styles throughout the 29 minutes playing time.
The band play rhythmic Deathgrind with enough blast to keep anyone happy. A good selection of riffs are deployed mercilessly and the fun never ends. It’s not all blood and gore though as they insert a few interesting ideas here and there to keep things fresh, such as the background choral chants on Garroting Way or the atmospheric melodics on Repulsive Corpse.
The deep growls are surgical in their assault; they’re focused, tight and sound supremely confident. Higher, wet screams join the party on occasion as well because who doesn’t enjoy some quality throat-shredding?
Sounding absurdly relevant and energised, this is Goregrind for the 21st century; assured, devastating and murderously capable.
Best get out of their way, as Putrid Offal have come to carve up the opposition.
This is the second album from US Sludge/Doom band Abstracter.
After really enjoying their 2012 debut album Tomb of Feathers, this is a release that has been eagerly awaited in these parts.
The first track, Lightless, seems to slowly writhe up out of a dark pit of urban decay, attempting to smother the land with its malignant spread. It’s an insidious start to the album and before you realise what’s going on you’re trapped in a nightmare landscape of pitch-black smoke and evil.
But oh dear Lord is it good. Rarely has cloying, suffocating Sludge felt so visceral and nastily enticing.
Abstracter are heavy and grim in the best ways that Sludge and Doom can achieve. These songs are essays in crawling malevolence and destructive passion. The band emanate a very raw darkness that you can feel like a physical presence.
I like the combination of nuanced riffing, heavy guitars and brutally gorgeous delivery. Abstracter effortlessly combine the beauty of Post-Metal with the dirty horror of Sludge. Their songwriting skills are such that moments of ugliness and transcendence are merged together. When the shades of light and dark clash there’s only ever going to be one true winner, but even though the menacing and murky atmospheres encase everything, the light isn’t totally consumed; you can feel it pulsing, straining against its captivity by this Hellish beast. This tense undercurrent is what gives Wound Empire its hidden beauty.
There’s a Black Metal influence to their sound that fits flawlessly into what they do. It’s not overbearing and doesn’t detract from the Doom, it just adds a further layer of thickly encrusted grime to songs that are already intimately familiar with all things subterranean.
With each of these titanic monuments to apocalyptic dystopian futures, I think that Abstracter have outdone themselves and actually managed to top their début album. No mean feat.
With true depth of composition and a talent for wrapping the listener up in their vision of all things gloomy and heavy, Abstracter have produced an album that has blown me away.
Fans of Neurosis, Altar of Plagues, Indian, Inter Arma, Amenra, Yob, Wolvhammer, Thou, etc. should perk up and take notice now.
Mass Punishment are from the US and play Thrash/Groove Metal. This is their début album.
Mass Punishment play their Metal with an overdose of muscle and with reference to the big hitters of the scene – Pantera, Machine Head, Sepultura, Hatebreed, etc.
This is Metal that takes no prisoners as it relentlessly stalks the battlefield for targets. On the surface of things it seems that a band like this might not have much to offer other the listener than some brawny riffs and angry anthems, but on closer inspection Mass Punishment surprise by having a lot more to them than just the basics.
For a start, the song lengths are longer than the norm for this type of music, with the average track spanning the 5-7 minute marks. This means that the band never rush themselves and give themselves the space to demonstrate what they can do.
So, amongst the brutality and heavy riffs, spread out across these song lengths, what makes Mass Punishment better than mere Pantera rip-offs?
A few things, actually. Let’s have a look –
Passion and integrity. They may be inspired by some of the masters but they are definitely doing their own thing.
Songwriting skills. The guys know how to write an enjoyable song. Lots of them.
Metal. Their songs also incorporate elements of a cleaner Metal style that’s not quite Power Metal but certainly isn’t pure brawn and muscle. Think Old-School Anthrax with soaring vocals meets a bit of a more Euro-Metal style. There’s no Melodic Death Metal, Gothenburg-style or anything like that; this is more melodic Thrash I suppose, but one from the finest pedigree and history.
Modernity. The band know how to incorporate some of the heavier and more extreme advances in Metal that have occurred since the mid/late-90s, which I think is Mass Punishment’s spiritual home. Influences from the best that Slipknot and Metalcore have to offer are incorporated where necessary. But only the good stuff.
Diversity. This is no one-trick pony. For every face-shredding part there’s the also nuance and subtlety; they have struck a good ratio between the two. They know how to rage and destroy but they also know how to inject melody and light into their attack. Just listen to The Desert Rogue.
All accounted for, Mass Punishment successfully take the Metal template that was established over 15/20 years ago and completely own it as their birthright.
I need to mention the singer as well. A band like this needs a charismatic, personable vocalist who is diverse and intense enough to match the power of the music. Thank fuck they have this, otherwise Mass Punishment would be an exercise in wasted potential. Phew.
This is a very holistic, complete album. Each song has its own identity, purpose and place on the album. It’s a great thing to hear.
Well, I’ve been hugely impressed with this. Considering the height of the bar in this style I haven’t heard Groove Metal done so damn well in ages. I really hope that this band can get some much needed exposure to the wider Metal scene as Proving Ground, Vol. 1 has a lot to offer any Metal fan.
Had they been born decades earlier when this style was at its height they would no doubt be huge. Having said that; Mass Punishment, and the music they represent, are still very relevant and more people would do well to listen to them.
Atoj are from Italy. This is their latest EP and they play Hardcore.
Are you happy with how it turned out?
Wonderbox Metal 