Review: VRSA – Saltwater Circadian

Review by Sandre the Giant

VRSA, or Vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (named for a staph infection that has mutated due to an overuse of antibiotics in humanity) are a progressive, sludgy post metal band from the North East of America, better known for their hardcore and metalcore scenes. VRSA lean more towards that Georgian stoner sludge metal scene, and their newest record ‘Saltwater Circadian’ is out now through Bandcamp.

The sludgy, Crowbar-esque grooves of the opening title track is a pretty good start, swaggering southern darkness bellowing through the haze. ‘Hurricane Song’ is a surprise, rumbling bass and clean vocals giving way to a swooning slab of almost Baroness-like sludge/post rock. It’s a little psychedelic, but with a subtle heaviness burrowing underneath. Baroness is actually a comparison I’ll come back to a few times, VRSA having that same excellent grasp of sludgy heaviness and super catchiness that early ‘Blue Record’ and ‘Red Album’ tracks had about them. Tracks like ‘Thirst’ are heavier than much of modern Baroness, but you’ve still got that unique, Savannah sludge feel about them. VRSA aren’t just about gurning nihilism, they have a more intricate story to tell, and that tale needs many facets. The sultry clean tones that open the monolithic ‘Born on the Tide’ are a perfect example of that, as is the moment about two minutes from the end where a powerful stoner groove gallops off into the sunset.

By the time that beautiful, emotive closer ‘Ocean Floor’ comes to a drifting, haunting close, I was really hooked on this record. ‘Saltwater Circadian’ has a perfect grasp on that sound that we got a lot of from the likes of Baroness or Kylesa back in the early 2010s but that no one is really doing anymore. VRSA need to inject more of this into my life as soon as possible, because ‘Saltwater Circadian’ has been a record that has really sunk its teeth into me recently.

https://www.facebook.com/VRSAband/

https://vrsa.bandcamp.com/

Review: Paradox Rift – Ensnared

Review by Sandre the Giant

Cleveland metallers Paradox Rift have got more styles in their pocket, according to this press release, tha most bands would know what to do with. Their new record, ‘Ensnared’, comes off the heels of a local music award and was recorded in parts by all the members, not in a complete studio session. Could this lead to some disjointedness or incohesive songwriting? Let’s find out.

A massive concoction of groove, tech death and hardcore slams together in opener ‘Dismembered by Dogs’, when huge angular riffs meets a powerful double kick engine pummelling the listener into submission. Taking a more Converge than Hatebreed hardcore angle, the jagged riffs and bends spike outwards from punishing brutality, all the while guttural roars bellow from the inside. Paradox Rift aren’t going for any one thing in particular, they have som odd progressive death moments, like the Ulcerate-esque ‘Doomsayer’, and some crushing breakdowns in ‘Grave Snuggler’. Everything seems to be in the melting pot, but the recipe is aiming for heaviness. That we get in spades, and you can see why they won their local Cleveland Music Awards for Best Metal Band. Their music is interested and varied, while retaining a core focus on devastation. There’s even space for a little introspective prog on the cool clean guitars at the start of ‘Loathsome’.

‘Ensnared’ is what I feel about this record; I had little hope for another ‘modern progressive technical groove death metal hardcore’ band, but Paradox Rift have really managed to sink their hooks into me. This record is constantly a pleasant surprise, making sure that you can’t drift off distracted when listening. You’ve got to stay connected to the brutality, the melodicisms, the sleek precision of it all. It may have all been recorded in separate sessions, but it has a completeness to it, a humanity that many modern death metal records lack.

https://www.facebook.com/ParadoxRiftOfficial

https://paradoxrift.bandcamp.com/album/ensnared

Review: Cavern Womb – Stages of Infinity

Review by Sandre the Giant

I don’t spend enough of my time listening to new EPs from bands I have come to realise, and sometimes it proves to be my undoing when it comes to newer bands particularly. Such as Philadephia’s Cavern Womb, whose 2021 debut split appearance ‘Communion of Corrupted Minds’ passed me by completely until earlier this week. After that, I discovered that purely by chance, they have a new debut EP coming on the 24th of May through Rotted Life Records, so I thought I would jump in feet first again!

‘Stages of Infinity’ looks to build on that uncomfortable, psychedelic brutality that their tracks on the split created. It is guttural, creepy and twsits and writhes like a bad, bad trip. Opener ‘Exultation of Depraved Majesty’ is brutal but in a way that is difficult to describe. All the elements of death metal are in place, but it is like you are looking at them through a strange filter. Everything feels odd, uncomfortable, oppressive. The disharmonic clean tones of ‘Amber Scourge’ are the same, bleeding into something frantic and maddening that sets them apart immediately. Like Ulcerate if they were more like Autopsy or, during the gloriously epic ‘Cryopreseved’, like Gorguts got a hold of some Atheist records and then wrote some epic post rock/prog metal passages. It is really difficult to describe but an exhilirating joy to behold. Everything the band do brings their own unique touch to proceedings.

Closer ‘A Vessel for the Esoteric’ is pure ugly cavernous death metal through and through, slowly building into a death/doom crescendo tha provides that final little piece of Cavern Womb’s puzzle. This is a band that are really capable of putting together an approach to heaviness that you’ve not come across before. A myriad of influences pour into the cauldron of carnage, and out comes ‘Stages of Infinity’, an EP that is startling  in execution and quality. I’m going to be keeping a much closer eye on these guys in future.

https://www.facebook.com/rottedlife

https://cavernwomb.bandcamp.com/

https://rottedlife.bandcamp.com/album/communion-of-corrupted-minds

2024 Anniversary Series 064: Suffocation – Souls to Deny

Scribed by Sandre the Giant

It would seem that 2004 was a bit of a comeback year for some bands; we’ve just seen the re-emergence of Death Angel and now brutal death metal titans and kings of New York death metal Suffocation were to return after 6 years to give us ‘Souls to Deny’. They hadn’t been together since 1998’s ‘Despise the Sun’ EP, and it was another sign that perhaps 2004 was the year where extremity returned to metal after its chart flirtations. But Suffocation are a band who were genre definers, sub genre creators and all round legends of death metal, would their oldest of old school approach to brutality still feel important in 2004, or was it going to be a struggle to recover their position?

Of course it wasn’t a fucking issue. ‘Souls to Deny’ is an album that you instantly recognise as Suffocation, that tight brutality and technicality was their trademark and now was their siren song back to our world. The guitar work is an intricate and crushing as always, executed with the kind of “how are they doing that” style Suffocation have always given us. I mean seriously, how do you sound this monolithic and still impress with technical skills? There have been brutal death metal bands who have tried for decades to match that peerless Frank Mullen guttural and no one makes it sound just as good. ‘Souls to Deny’ is a frantic record, a frenzied riddle of blastbeats, stop start riffing, crushing low end brutality and razor sharp lead guitar work. ‘Surgery of Impalement’ became an instant DM classic on release, and I think one of the reasons that this record felt so right was that Suffocation hadn’t changed their sound or approach from their earliest material. They got their sound perfected on ‘Effigy of the Forgotten’, and then continued to refine it over the following records. It meant that they could pretty much just pick up where they left off in 1998 and still be as revered.

Frank Mullen may have retired by 2024, but albums like this just reassert his position as one of the kings of death metal vocals, and Suffocation have continued to rip album after album of ludicrous quality over the intervening years. Death metal was marching back to the fore in 2004, coming for those innocent little maggots who had gotten the merest sliver of it in Slipknot and thought, fuck this heavy heavy shit is for me. I was one of these kids. Well, you’ve been given a number of great records in death metal in 2004 already, and ‘Souls to Deny’ is, ahem, undeniably one of the 2000s best death metal records.

https://www.facebook.com/suffocation

2024 Anniversary Series 063: Death Angel – The Art of Dying

Scribed by Sandre the Giant

Ah, the comeback record. A real risk at times for a legendary band with a legendary discography to attempt, especially in a genre that was as ‘uncool’ as thrash was in the early 2000s. We were a few years behind the thrash revival of 05/06/07, but seeds had been planted by 2004 and Death Angel were to become a bigger part than anyone could have guessed. Reforming in 2001 as a supposed one off for the Thrash of the Titans festival fundraiser to help Chuck Billy’s cancer battle, they enjoyed themselves so much that it became permanent. The classic lineup aren’t all still there now, but this was the same one that had recorded some all time gems of thrash, except Gus Pepa. But that first album back, expectations are super high and you’re back in a style that hasn’t really been seen properly for years? All we could do was cross our fingers.

‘The Art of Dying’ was the result of this reunion, an album that is possibly more important for what it meant to the scene and the band than what the music was like. This was a real underground legend coming back to life, a band who most of us had only the chance to experience on old CDs (my ‘Act III’ one has been abused at this point), and whose early work had informed so much of thrash’s more technical side. Their youthful enthusiam and tight knit comradery (all were related by blood in their original incarnation, and then drummer Andy Galeon was only 15 when ‘The Ultra-Violence’ came out) gave their first three records a real energy, a real sense of exuberance and the quality was maddeningly good. ‘The Art of Dying’ had no chance to be as good as those, but as a thrash record in a world that NEEDED thrash records, it was really good. ‘The Art of Dying’ became a pillar, alongside ‘Tempo of the Damned’ and maybe even ‘The System Has Failed’ on which old school thrash could come back to life in the next few years. I mean, just listen to the old school gallop of opener ‘Thrown to the Wolves’, the Motörhead-esque ‘Land of Blood’ and the essence of ‘proper’ thrash comes roaring back to you. Municipal Waste. Gama Bomb. Toxic Holocaust. Evile. Bonded by Blood; they all owe Death Angel a great deal, and this record was a concept proof that thrash can be very much alive in 2004 and beyond.

I’m not holding them solely responsible, but it cannot be much of a coincidence that the thrash revival started not long after Death Angel resurfaced, especially considering how many of them were aiming to sound like prime Death Angel. ‘The Art of Dying’ may have been slightly early, but it was certainly an opening salvo to a genre reinvigoration that they would help spearhead in influence as well as actual contributions. It would take four years for the follow up, but ‘Killing Season’ gave us ‘Sonic Beatdown’ so that was worth the wait too! ‘The Art of Dying’ gave us all a reminder in 2004 that the records we all grew up on were proper thrash, and the style still fucking ruled.

https://www.facebook.com/deathangel

Review: Terminal Nation – Echoes of the Devil’s Den

Review by Sandre the Giant

When Terminal Nation’s debut full length ‘Holocene Extinction’ came out in 2020, the Killchain were very impressed by it, seen in our review here. Their blend of death metal and hardcore was done properly, not just breakdowns, brees and lurid artwork. But the hype has been building for the follow up, 4 years on, and it is finally here. ‘Echoes of the Devil’s Den’ is out now through 20 Buck Spin.

A tolling bell? Gothic organ? The title track opens with all my favourite flourishes into a big knuckle dragging doomy riff, and then bursts into deathly hardcore thunder. There’s a little taste of Swedish death guitar tone crunching through the thick low end (hello start of ‘Bullet for a Stone’), and the deadly chug of ‘Written by the Victor’ is assisted by a guest appearance by Nails’ Todd Jones. As if we needed more brutality. Lyrically, Terminal Nation have taken more inspiration from our collapsing society of selfishness and greed, which has only been exacerbated in the past four years, and you can see the results in the glorious shimmering crush of Empire in Decay’, or the soon-to-be modern classic ‘Merchants of Bloodshed’, that features Jesse Leach on clean vocals. It is a new thing for Terminal Nation, but one that doesn’t feel out of place. This is a band whose execution of its style is so pure and powerful that almost anything they try works brilliantly. ‘Embers of Humanity’ opens with clean, quiet tones that evolve into a spiralling melodic powerhouse, never losing that primal underlying heaviness but remaining evocative, as if you are looking with remorse at the smoking remains of our civilisation.

Wrpaped in a glorious piece of art by Adam Burke of Nightjar Illustration, who captured the apocalyptic feel and almost mythical heaviness of Terminal Nation’s sound perfectly, ‘Echoes of the Devil’s Den’ is THE record for our modern world. It captures the ugliness, the pain and the devastation we are leaving in our wake, but also a touch of the introspection we who are trying to make things better feel. This is a record that I will be spending a lot of time with in the near future.

https://www.facebook.com/terminalnation

https://terminalnationhc.bandcamp.com/album/one-party-system

https://www.20buckspin.com/

2024 Anniversary Series 060: Clutch – Blast Tyrant

Scribed by Sandre the Giant

‘Blast Tyrant’ was the sixth full length record from Maryland stoner rock kings Clutch, but the first to really give the band a big push into the mainstream, with a Bam Margera produced video for ‘The Mob Goes Wild’ just at the time the Jackass crew were hitting their peak cultural zeitgeist. If you’d been following them before this, you knew that the elevation was a mere formality, as Clutch had been one of hard rock’s most consistent hidden gems since 1993, but this was really where the world got to experience the full force of Neil Fallon and co’s full on stoner boogie in prime form.

It is Fallon’s lyrical style and charismatic voice that always drew me into Clutch’s world from the very start. When you’ve got an album with lines like “Born with a moustache and a supernova, tossed off the cliffs of Dover, washed up on a faraway shore in the arms of the daughter of the buffalo” and “Don’t worry, it’s just stigmata, pass me a napkin and don’t you dare tell my mother”, you’re always going to catch an eye in a world of nu-metal’s ever more self loathing and childish bullshit. Fallon’s throaty swagger and enthralling sermons of doomy, bluesy rock have always helped Clutch be a step above the rest. It helps that his vocals come above some of rock’s most intoxicating groove-laden songs, and ‘Blast Tyrant’ has so many of them. ‘Worm Drink’, ‘Profits of Doom’ and especially ‘Promoter (of Earthbound Causes)’ are possessed of an unearthly rump shaking righteousness, and you can see where so many of the modern stoner rock scene has taken cues from Clutch. They made rock groovy and funky again, but not in a trite way. You’d have to be dead to not find yourself nodding your head and swaying to this record. It also featured the first acoustic forays of the band too, and when it was reissued in 2011 we got a good few acoustic versions of some of these tracks. If Fallon’s voice is suited for anything more than groove-laden rockers, it might be the dark country, smoky backroom bar vibes of tracks like ‘The Regulator’ or the mesmerising ‘Ghost’.

Clutch should have been too weird, too esoteric and odd for the mainstream music world to embrace them, with their throwback grooves and Fallon’s lyrical conundrums. But we’ve got to a point now where their style has been permeating into rock and stoner bands for long enough that they struck a Billboard Hard Rock number one in 2016, and have consistently charted highly ever since this record. My own history with the band started with ‘From Beale Street to Oblivion’, still my personal favourite (I got to hear ‘The Devil & Me’, sitting at the bar in the Hard Rock Cafe on Beale Street, Memphis in 2009 and it ranks high in my lifetime musical highlights) but ‘Blast Tyrant’ and ‘Pure Rock Fury’ are close behind. A singularly brilliant band who sound like no one else, and never will.

https://www.facebook.com/Clutchband

Review: Chunked – Inhaling the Infestation

Review by Sandre the Giant

Originally released back at the start of 2023, the debut EP from Tennessee death metallers Chunked, ‘Inhaling the Infestation’ has been given a rerelease through Gore House Productions, a label who specialise in just this range of putrid death metal ugliness. It is out now on CD and cassette.

Put out by mainman Adrian Mauk, who seems to have gathered a full band behind him to move forward into their debut full length (coming soon hopefully), ‘Inhaling the Infestation’ is old school death metal in the vein of old Cannibal Corpse or Dying Fetus. Opener ‘Pulsing Excrement’ is a chuggy, guttural belch of bloodsoaked death metal, midpaced but laser focused on a steamrolling riff and filthy tone. There’s a hint or two of hardcore creeping in as well, the likes of ‘Concrete Veins’ definitely gives you a taste of that, while closer ‘Submerged in Rotten Sewage’ is swooning, rumbling caveman death metal in the best way. The title track remains my favourite track though, a lumbering beast of brutal slam riffs and guttural roars that drags your head into a neck wrecking symphony.

‘Inhaling the Infestation’ isn’t a very long EP, coming in just under twenty minutes, but it packs a lot of gory and gurgling brutality into that time. Chunked are not going for anything super technical and complicated; their work is simple but devastingly effective and there’s something kind of refreshing to listen to a band who aren’t trying to reinvent or redefine, just playing brutal riffs and hailing death. We’ll see how this works over a full length sometime soon, but in an EP form it works. Check it out

https://www.facebook.com/ChunkedBand

https://chunkedband.bandcamp.com/album/inhaling-the-infestation

https://gorehouseproductions.bandcamp.com/

Review: Witch Vomit – Funeral Sanctum

Review by Sandre the Giant

Portland’s Witch Vomit have got quite a bit of expectation riding on them for their new record ‘Funeral Sanctum’, given how good their previous work has been (particularly ‘A Scream from the Tomb Below). They are also under the umbrella of 20 Buck Spin, a label that specialises in high quality death metal releases so it seems like the perfect partnership, right? All portents and omens seem to be good thus far…

The first thing you will be wowed by on this record is the guitar playing. A wild mix of Morbid Angel and Obituary, powerful groove rumbles underneath while crazed riffing spirals over the top, infectious fretwork and a real sense of urgency. ‘Blood of Abomination’ could definitely have snuck onto the off cuts of ‘Altars of Madness’, while the caustic leads of ‘Dominion of a Darkened Realm’ are still burning through my synapses from the first time I heard it. It has almost a touch of classic Gothenburg melodicisms in there, and maybe even the slightest hint of Dissection too? The dark brutality of everything is excellent too, there’s a real sinister low rumble to ‘Serpentine Shadows’ that rears its obsidian head towards the end that shakes the earth. I’m not sure what my favourite track is, but the dive bombing abyssal leads and infectious chug of ‘Black Wings of Desolation’ is definitely up there. I also enjoyed that ‘Abject Silence’ gave us a little more of that Dissection melodicism, even if it was only an interlude, so we could see the potential for where Witch Vomit can go from here.

Maybe it has just been because I’ve stared at that glorious cover art for too long (blue album art supremacy!) but there is a certain element of frosted horror covering the burning USDM core of Witch Vomit’s sound. A slightly cold and detached vibe permeates ‘Funeral Sanctum’, as if the scalding power of classic US death metal is slowly becoming beneath them as they rise to a whole new plain of deathly supremacy. ‘Funeral Sanctum’ is an absolute blinder, and is going to be riding high in our end of year thoughts unless we have one of the best years ever. Superb.

https://www.facebook.com/WebsOfHorror

https://witchvomit1.bandcamp.com/

https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/funeral-sanctum

2024 Anniversary Series 057: Fear Factory – Archetype

Scribed by Sandre the Giant

I had very little context of Fear Factory when 2004’s ‘Archetype’ came out, other than watching the video for ‘Linchpin’ on Kerrang numerous times and being amazed that a band could actually sound that mechanical. So when I first saw ‘Cyberwaste’, the lead single from the band’s sixth full length (or fifth, depending on your feelings about ‘Concrete’), I was blown away. ‘Archetype’ was the band’s first record without founding guitarist Dino Cazares, and thus began a modern legacy of lineup weirdness and records that could hit or miss.

‘Archetype’ was a hit though, even with bassist Christian Wolbers stepping up the guitar role. His play style was obviously modelled on Cazares to get that Fear Factory sound down right, but his guitar work sounded warmer and richer than the mechanical, serrated chug that Dino specialised in. The result is that ‘Archetype’ is inimitably Fear Factory, and yet sounds very different to the other albums. That crisp, sleek metallic riffing has tempered in tone but not in execution. Like cold steel encased in warm flesh, tracks like ‘Drones’ and ‘Bonescraper’ possess this feeling in spades, while the melodic gallop of the title track and ‘Bite the Hand That Feeds’ are yet more reminders that Burton C Bell’s voice is one of the genre’s most potent weapons. He is on top form here, belting out guttural roars and beautiful clean vocals without effort. He’s always had an immediately recognisable tone, and it is as much of Fear Factory’s sound as Dino’s riffing. That’s why the band’s best records have featured them both, but ‘Archetype’ is a good argument for why their style and sound have always succeeded.

I love ‘Archetype’; partially because it was that first new record that came out when I’d first got into the band, partially because I think it has actually held up a lot over the past 20 years. Perhaps it is a nostalgia thing, perhaps not, but for me it stands close behind ‘Demanufacture’, ‘Obsolete’ and ‘Soul of a New Machine’ as one of the best Fear Factory records. One that suffered a more reactionary analysis in the moment, but over time has reinforced its quality.

https://www.facebook.com/fearfactory