Question – Doomed Passages (Review)

QuestionQuestion are a Mexican Death Metal band and this is their début album.

The band give their Death Metal a mysterious occult sheen and the music is steeped in it. Rather than a straightforward blastfest or one dimensional brutality Question inject their music with a smattering of Death-like melody and a feeling of grandiose song structure.

There is blasting, of course, and there is brutality, but there is more than just this. Dark melodies and slower sections are rife and the compositions are right up there from the heights of the Classic Death Metal era.

Question channel the Death Metal greats such as Death, Incantation, Hypocrisy, Morbid Angel and Suffocation to deliver an engaging and involving album that doesn’t take the easy or simple route.

The compositions are well written and show a degree of maturity and integrity that most bands lack. Longer songs give the band’s creativity time to shine and allow them to demonstrate their breadth of talent within the Death Metal genre.

The singer has a deep voice that’s absolutely monolithic; like an angry God from ancient days past decreeing loudly from the mountain tops.

This may be a new album but it is stylistically of a time when each song had its own identity and albums were holistically a complete package.

Top marks for Question.

Human Infection – Curvatures In Time (Review)

Human InfectionHuman Infection are from the US and play Death Metal.

And what an album cover! Now that’s what a Death Metal cover should look like…

The music doesn’t disappoint. After a perfunctory intro it’s straight into the USDM-style blasting with the nicely named Celestial.

The vocals instantly jump out at you with their character and are more Malevolent Creation than the cookie monster-standard.

This harks back to earlier times circa the 90’s, with short, brutal songs that could have come out of the Cannibal Corpse stable or the Floridian swamps; the band have the USDM blasting down to a nostalgic art, and the mid-paced assaults are authentic and rousing. There is even a subtle Thrash element to some of the riffs. It’s not a huge influence, but it’s there, adding its bite to the attack.

Human Infection also drag the songwriting skills of the bands from this earlier era into their work. These tracks are not merely a collection of riffs; thought has gone into the ebb and flow of the songs, as well as to making them catchy and loading them with hooks.

Like Morbid Angel and Suffocation conspired to produce a bastard offspring; Curvatures In Time is a worthy heir to the throne.

Suffocation – Suffocation (Review)

SuffocationSuffocation have been around for some time now and are relatively well known, so this band needs no real introduction I feel. Suffice to say that technical and brutal Death Metal is the order of the day here; and Suffocation do what they do very well in deed.

This album is well-written and composed, and has a very good production with all of the instruments clear and well-recorded. The vocals are nice and deep, as you’d expected from a band of this style, but still remain legible in cases as they are not of the bowel-loosening-low variety.

Probably their slowest release, (but still with more than enough speed and blast); this is an album of riffs. Riffs galore, riffs aplenty, riff-driven. The riffs alone are enough to justify getting this album, let alone everything else.

A strong album; this should be a comfortable fit as part of any Death Metal fan’s collection.

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