The gap between Black Breath‘s 2010 LP Heavy Breathing and this year’s Sentenced to Life album seems almost instantaneous. Heavy Breathing was a massive release for them, and managed to turn heads in some surprising corners of “music’s” reviewing community. The band who ended their 2010 Euro Tour with a wallop, took only a few months and several thousand miles before ending up back in Kurt Ballou’s God City studios, with a pressurised atmosphere of time and tension the background to this short and crusty record. Even their most recent Euro tour back in 2011 gave the band a chance to air a couple of new tracks. It literally is non-stop for these guys.

You can decode Black Breath’s work by simply splitting their music into 2 camps: “rippers” and “jammers”. As particularly defined by the band, “rippers” tend to push the BPMs and concentrate on speed; “jammers” tend to be a little longer and more progressive in the arrangement. Where Heavy Breathing had a balanced offering of both, Sentenced to Life is mostly full of 80s death metal infused punk “rippers”. Maybe this is due to the reaction of the crowd during the bands recent tours. The hot and sweaty basement shows filled with hardcore kids and metal-heads finger-pointing and moshing their way through the sets. This band thrives on the energy from the crowd and perhaps this is reflected in the increased extremity of this release.

Their new cobwebbed logo and album cover illustrates the renewed link to the past, with bands of the 1980s from thrash to death metal, but within a modern sort of d-beat hardcore that Southern Lord seem to thrive on. Just look at that album cover; it’s as if the film Warriors went to a whole new level. The first trio of tracks are pure headbanging filth – thrash riffs and tremolo picking dominate throughout, and “Sentenced to Life” steps into anthem mode with a sure-fire fist punching chorus. Yet somehow, the band delve into an even darker sound, one of buzzing monolithic riffs and harmonious intros interjected with huge stabs of guitar noise. This aggressive dirge allows some meticulous lead guitar playing which is bathed in chorus FX and sounds lusciously 1980s, such as on “Obey” and “The Flame”, where the latter sounding very similar to Slayer. Less punk ‘n’ roll, more thrash Sentenced to Life isn’t a game-changer as such, but a perfect accompaniment to their past releases.

[Originally published on Onemetal]

Hidden away at the top of Decapitated’s homepage is a quotation. It reads: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” This fitting quote sums up both the tragic back-story of this release, and the strength in character of focal point Wacław “Vogg” Kiełtyka to continue this part of his life.

Bringing this more up to date, the line-up changes and brief UK tour back in February of last year gave way for the new line-up to head into the Radio Gdańsk Studio in Poland, a recording unit which the band used to full during the sessions, including recording in the corridors. Carnival Is Forever is the product of a two month recording session and a six month period of polishing the material.

When modern death metal splintered towards the core, some bands wanted the crowd to get their pump on during the breakdowns and excessive riffing. Decapitated just wanted to fucking destroy you. 2006′s Organic Hallucinosis was a mass of dense drums and guitars that wasn’t built just on the tremolo picked riff, but a combination of huge power chords and inventive drumming; both these instruments waves created a huge wall of sound that was intimidating and asphyxiating.

The essence of past recordings is clearly smelt within Carnival Is Forever. After all, Vogg has said that some of the material was born in the days of the prior Decapitated. Nihility’s rough polyrhythmics are present on a good chunk of the album coupled with the mesmeric riffs from The Negation, which can be heard on tracks such as ‘United’, ‘Homo Sum’ and ‘Pest’. With this album, Decapitated have turned the techniques of recording a modern death metal album back an age, but have not changed their way of playing too drastically. There are surprising moments of clean playing and flashy wah solos. It is a refreshing stance that once again will cause other bands to look at themselves and perhaps produce their albums in a similar way.

Vogg has apparently changed amps from Dimebag Warheads / Mesa Boogies to old solid states and a Crate Excalibur. This has lead to a whole heap of nostalgic crunch, and even a hint of a 90s Pantera attitude in the chugging on some tracks, far away from the colder more industrial tone on Nihility. Carnival Is Forever seems to have been mixed at lower levels than Organic Hallucinosis, which is not bad thing considering the “loudness war” of the past few years. It has meant that the guitar is not as solidly packed, the drums sound natural and not dominating, and there is a just enough deep rumbling bass to push the low end. In fact, because the guitars aren’t double tracked, the natural dynamics within the band can be heard as Vogg’s pentatonic solos rip through without hindrance during some tracks.

Versatility seems to be the key as instead of one-dimensional vocals that have been a part of past recordings, Rafal Piotrowski experiments with a variety of deathly growls and shouts. It is refreshing to read about the steps the band took to remain as “authentic” as possible, creating an album in a series of whole song live takes, rather cut and pasting the riffs together. It seems a little odd to put such an emphasis on the traditional playing and recording but, for the band, it seemed important to tell their fans that everything was real: “fully live drums, no triggers or plastic sounding stuff whatsoever.”

[Originally published on Onemetal]

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