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]

Incoming! Black Breath: Mother Abyss. Out on March 26, 2012 via Southern Lord.

To get your hands on this split 7” from Skin Like Iron and Nails, you will have to part with 10 of your shiniest golden nuggets, and be prepared to wait a couple of anxious weeks whilst USPS decide whether to stress test your purchase. But that’s the price you have to pay if you want to keep supporting self-released EPs from these two Golden State hardcore bands.

At first, this got my interest due to involvement of Nails, the So Cal based grinding hardcore act. They play fast and in your face. Perfect. Their first track ‘Annihilation’ is a gurgling mix of thrash and hardcore – think ‘Conform’ and ‘Scapegoat’ from 2010’s Unsilent Death. The band seem to have scooped a lot of the mid range out of this recording and the bass / guitar is very heavy on the low end. It is missing the crunch that made Unsilent Death so biting. Vocalist/guitarist Todd Jones has also opted to pitch his voice higher than before, and it’s good to hear he hasn’t succumbed to the death growl that filters through grindcore. At a mere 25 seconds long, it is easy to miss their second track ‘Cry Wolf’. With an amalgamation of obliterating power violence and punk verse, its length makes it a little disappointing.

Skin Like Iron serve up something different. Feedback and a lenghty intro piece full of layers of jagged chords flow into a melodic hardcore sound akin to Ashes Rise and Wolfbrigade. Vocalist Alex Capasso, who incidentally did the artwork for this EP, delivers one rasping verse after another. Both tracks have a dry sound, and despite the aggressive nature they remain very melodious and strangely uplifting. This is probably due to heavy use of major scale guitar leads that entwine together. This band could easily fill the void left by bands such as Pulling Teeth.

[Originally published on Onemetal]

From civil unrest in this country to a long and severe situation in another. Throughout very recent times Greece has had its fair share of extreme discontent which has resulted from the proposed and then implemented austerity measures designed to save the country and its worsening economic climate. You would have to go as far back as the transition from a war economy after the Second World War in Western Europe to appreciate how much the belt in Greece has been tightened. It’s no wonder Athenians have regularly taken to Syntagma square and elsewhere to vent their frustration. Anyway, that strenuous link to to Athens based Sarabante is as much to ease into this text as much as it is to highlight the financial pressures that many bands, promoters and independent labels in Greece will be experiencing now and over the next few years.

But it’s no wonder that there is such a strong crust/hardcore scene in parts of Greece. The grind scene is big enough with the anti-authoritarian/anarchist crowd for a generous amount of gigs to take place on University grounds and squats, and on the whole it seems more likely for promoters to continue to book local acts and those across the Balkans rather than the more expensive tours from Western Europe and beyond.

Whereas a lot of the crust bands around Athens seem to be around for a year, releasing demos or EPs that sound similar to Tragedy or Amebix before parting ways, Sarabante are back after a hiatus from the stage. And if the US won’t go to the Balkans, then the Balkans would have to go to the US. In this case Sarabante were recommended to Southern Lord by Ashes Rise guitarist Brad Boatright, who mastered the band’s debut. They do sound similar to the aforementioned – such as on the opener “Πνιγμένοι στη Σιωπή” – yet the slower tempo tracks and atmospherics also point to bands such as Isis and early Neurosis – a suffocating and pressing sound of bass and harsh guitar. Amongst this a is a politically charged band with the aggresssion of Victims though not as extreme as some of the bands from Salonica; but a solid hardcore punk structure and aggressive riffing should please those who lean towards the tighther sounds of d-beat. As my good friend from Athens says: “kids like their music dirty here.” They certainly do.

[Originally published on Onemetal]

For the promo video of the track “Cold”, Xibalba got together with a bunch of friends, had a bbq and generally smoked and drank their way through the afternoon. It’s a video shoot not uncommon amongst hardcore bands, and designed to show how much people love to floorpunch at some of their gigs. The Southern California five-piece are a mix of lifestyle choices and influences that broaden the local hardcore scene, and a couple of band members even make sure the current crop of bands are booked in their area.

However, it is this broad aspect of the band that has an adverse effect. The mix of influences leaves no real defining sound that makes them instantly recognisable. Even when the band have a certain viewpoint, it isn’t something that they want to convince the listener about; “some bands have certain agendas and messages which is cool and the reason I got into hardcore, to be able to speak my mind but no need to force it down someone’s throat.” It’s not as is the lyrics aren’t forceful enough, either. For instance:

“Fuck the world it’s just me now, and I’m after you. Nothing will save you, eye for an eye / Finger on the trigger, barrel to your head / it would be better if you were dead.”

Xibalba fuse together an older death metal sound and texture with 90s hardcore beatdown bands (some say Sepultura and Disembodied, but I still haven’t made my mind up). But a generous portion of the album is stuck in caustic sludge, strangled by the depths of monotonous riffs and dampening much of the tempo and energy. It isn’t until just after mid-way through the release that tracks get interesting again with tracks such as “Red” and “Obituary”, “Cold” and “Spanish Harlem”. This is where their strengths lie, and it’s a shame that they are to be found at the end of the release.

[Originally published on Onemetal]

It isn’t entirely obvious that this release is a concept album, but the premise of The Torture Never Stops involves a metaphor for society, of doomed relationships and the psychological breakdown of the album’s protagonist, all happily buried amongst a thoroughly zombie inspired fiction. Yet this borderline grindhouse script doesn’t have the planned structural changes in the pacing of the album like so many other concept albums, and so much of the plot unfolds within the lyrical content.

With a blood-curdling opening sequence that comprises of a simple but morbid piano riff, the band are quick to inflict some thick death metal riffs and compressed, damaging drum sounds in your ear. This sets the scene perfectly for the even more uptempo track, ‘The Maze’, in which Marc Rizzo-style whammy-fx riffs are spliced into a grooving, almost Slipknot-influenced open guitar riff – think of how the main riff to ‘People = s**t’ plays out, and this is sort of in that area. It’s fast, it’s groovy, and it’s hard-hitting – and on the whole probably one of the most percussively forceful albums I have heard in recent months. In fact it is the influence of Slipknot and bands such as Machine Head who have helped shape the band through the years. They are openly in awe of the former’s stage presence, and the latter’s professionalism, and you can hear the influences flow through the album in the form of a late 90s groove-metal sound, albeit mixed with more Devildriver tempos.

Amongst this clash of styles is a thin industrial undercurrent. Some recent French metal music have often had a hint of industrial influences within the sometimes intricate, experimental, and deathly sounds. From the industrialised black metal of Blut Aus Nord, the cyber metal of Scarve to the industrial rockOne Way Mirror there is a combination of influences which brings out a sometimes pessimistic social commentary, yet embraces the modern metal world of computer recorded albums and post-80s electronic trickery.

However, compared to their earlier releases, the band decided to reduce the amount of overtly industrial influences for this LP. “It was a […] natural step, because at the time of production, we wondered whether to add things, and we said that there was not necessarily a need to add more … it did not work as well”. Whereas their French peers Dagoba have continued to inject fantastical waves of synth work for their last album Poseidon, Zuul FX and have now certainly embraced the congested area of aggressive meal occupied by the likes ofDevildriver, Soulfly, Slipknot, Machine Head et al.

The Torture Never Stops also harks back to the more melodic and sometimes timid metal of last decade. For instance on ‘Devil Son Vs Sexy Witch’, where the dual vocals are met with lethargic choruses and uninspired riffs. It sends my finger towards the ‘stop’ switch, yet there are a few interesting moments within this, well, average album. Stand out tracks incorporate a heap of attitude and polyrhythmic guitar riffing, such as on ‘Beat The Crap Out’ and ‘The Torture Never Stops’, both thoroughly influenced by the work of Fear Factory. But it just doesn’t have that constant invention for my easily distracted mind.

[Originally published on Onemetal]

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