When talking / thinking about the Extreme Metal scene, we’re used to focus on the scenes from Europe, America (both North and South), and ‘modern’ parts of the Pacific (New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Singapore more specifically). However, more than once I got in touch with a release from a band that comes from a mostly ‘unusual’ country. I can enlist an impressive amount of bands, but I will not. But believe me if I say that there’s nice stuff around, even coming from countries like Iran (Margg, for example, are top-class), Saudi Arabia (I’m impressed by Al Namrood, for example), the United Arab Emirates (check out the reviews I did for Nervecell, with their roots in this desert country), Jordan (Relics Of Martyrs); I even did a review a couple of years ago for a band from the Maldives, Sacred Legacy (once again: Archive-tab on Concreteweb’s site…). Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…
Brings me to Brood Of Hatred, a band that hails from Tunisia, and named after the same-titled Suffocation-track. There indeed is a very small Death Metal scene out there, especially in the capital of Tunis, and there are a couple, and that brings me closer to my passion, of Black Metal projects as well. Seen from international point of view, however, none of these Tunisian bands are ‘huge’. No big deals with major labels, no worldwide distribution, no appearances on notorious festivals; no, this scene is too limited (read: underestimated???).
Brood Of Hatred might bring the difference. The band was formed as a solo-project by Muhammed Mêlki in 2010. However, after a while he joined forces with same-minded musicians, and Brood Of Hatred turned into a ‘real’ band. In 2012 there was a self-released EP, New Order Of Intelligence, and now the band (besides original member and vocalist / bass player / engineer Muhammed Mêlki, the band nowadays consists of guitar players Muhammed Bouchir and Melik Khelifa, and drummer Hazem Jaziri) returns with their first full length studio album, Skinless Agony (there’s a video with the very same title, by the way), which has a total running time of forty three minutes.
Skinless Agony is Death Metal, but of a mostly nightly and atmospheric kind. With ‘atmospheric’ I do not mean that this material sounds ‘light’ at all. On the contrary, the atmosphere is misty, haunting and abyssal, and the execution is technical, heavy and pounding. And to continue with the performance: excellent. But the main element that lifts this album up is the song writing. These compositions are written with victory in mind, for such aural battles cannot be lost. And I do not want to denigrate any scene that is ‘uncommon’ when it comes to Extreme Metal, but if I didn’t know Brood Of Hatred hail from Tunisia, I would have guessed they were from Europe or North America. Anyway, the rhythmic compositions vary a lot in speed, with a focus on slow to mid-tempo pieces. The band adds several melodic leads, which shorten the ‘border’ with the Dark / Doom-Death scene. The elementary basics are inspired by the traditional, primal constructions of the scene from, let’s say, about fifteen to twenty years ago, yet there a lot of progressive twists. The latter, the progressive approach, gets not translated by jazzy loops, neuropathic breaks or avant-garde phantasies, yet through some unconventional high-tech riffage and a surgically-precise rhythm section. Also the raw guitar sound might remind the listener, from time to time, to the Post-Tech tones of a voivod-ian or Post-Black act, while other moments dwell within spheres of desolate early-nineties Doom-Death Metal.
Despite a lack of originality (but who needs something renewing if ‘the usual’ still rules?!), this technical yet melodic and autumnal Death / Doom-Death Metal is of a high quality. And since this band comes from an ‘unusual’ country, it is even more surprising to hear such professionalism. In any case this stuff is highly recommended if you can appreciate somewhat darkly-oppressive and post-universal stuff.
For fans of: Immolation, Gorguts, Ulcerate, Portal, Nile, Katatonia etc.