Label: Relapse Records
Distribution: Rough Trade Benelux
Release date: June 2011
_________________________________

Because Relapse did send us quite an interesting summer-package on new and re-releases, finished the past months, I won’t review them separately (or at least not all of them), yet I’ll collect this stuff in some ‘special’.

This is the second 2011-Relapse-special, dealing with some of the material this label released during June 2011. An update about the releases from July and August will follow soon, a May-special had been written and posted recently as well.
_________________________________

Band: Looking For An Answer
Title: Eterno Treblinka
Release date: June 7th 2011
Review: CD

One of Spain’s premiere Grind-combos (and believe me: when it comes to decent old fashioned and straight-forward Grind-filth, Spain is a country not to be underestimated! It was the case in the earliest years, it was the case during the late nineties and the beginning of this century, and it will still be the case, I guess, in a few years. Or at least for a few months…  Weeks maybe?) return with their first Relapse-soniksikness. Hurray, ‘cause we’re talking about a new recording of Looking For An Answer, available just a couple of weeks after the release of Haemorrhage’s Hospital Carnage, also on Relapse.
Seventeen tracks, thirty one minutes in totality, it’s like a testament to what straight-forward Death Metal-injected Old Skool Grindcore should be. Razor-sharp sonic attacks, deadly blasts, merciless splatter-eruptions and gorified decelerations, coming with a filthy, muddy sound, it’s like an angel whispering a lullaby in my ear.
Don’t expect the addition of modern gadgets or progressive constructions, don’t wait for the most renewing band to come; no, this material is primitive, no-nonsense and completely lacking any commercial aim. It sounds strongly inspired by good oldies like Terrorizer, Autopsy, Repulsion, Napalm Death and Brutal Truth, mixed with elements from Obituary / Bolt Thrower (certain guitar riffs indeed), early Grave / Corpse, Carnage / Carbonized, Suffocation and Exhumed.

82/100
_________________________________

Band: Tombs
Title: Path Of Totality
Release date: June 7th 2011
Review: CD

New York’s Tombs are such a band that grows in all aspects. Not only the trio’s experience is a surplus (even though Tombs is only a couple of years of age), which is the declaration of a matured song writing and performance, but their approach gets more and more interesting, by dwelling between lots of separated yet somewhat related spheres, musical genres and influences. One might remember 2009’s Relapse-debut Winter Hours, and earlier this year this label did release the magnificent yet rather limited (1,000 copies) compilation Fear Is The Weapon (review posted on the site on February 13th).
Path Of Totality almost clocks one hour and was recorded by John Congleton (think: Baroness, Explosions In The Sky). The album stands for an extremely powerful, thick, overwhelming and obscure mist of evil with, again, (some of) the best elements from various genres. Opener Black Hole Of Summer, for example, is a massive Sludge-track with a Post-Black sound. It’s a timeless marriage that gets repeated more than once, yet never with the same basics. Those ‘Post’-elements are more present than before, not depending on any specific tempo or influence. It’s part of the natural evolution of this band, that’s for sure. Another evolution is the increased Post-Hardcore-injection at the one hand, and the burial of their original Psycho-Grind influences. The massive sound is gargantically droning, lacking the industrialised approach from, for example, the band’s self-titled 2008-EP, and in spite of a speed that varies between ultra-slow and softly up-tempo, the influences from the Doom Metal scenes (from Traditional to Funereal) -even though, and luckily, not with eternal disappearance- evolved into some Doom-based Sludgecore-alike package.
Path Of Totality is a next step, based on the past, developed in the present, focused on the future. It is an unusual album, unique in intensity and atmosphere, and ever-exploring the deepest pits from listenable darkness…

90/100
_________________________________

Band: Kingdom Of Sorrow
Title: Behind The Blackest Tears
Release date: June 8th 2011
Review: CD

Kingdom Of Sorrow is a rather unique project. It once started when two experienced psychos joined forces again (‘again’, ‘cause they did work together in a project before, called Crowbreed, named after their main bands): Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed-fame and Kirk Windstein – think Down and Crowbar. In 2008, Relapse released the self-called debut, and since the duo did record a new one, we can’t talk about ‘just a hobby-project’ anymore.
This sophomore recording Behind The Blackest Tears, mixed again by Mister Zeuss, lasts for forty minutes and goes partly on in the vein of the first full length: monumental, groovy Sludge with lots of breaks and tempo-changes, elements from Doom, Hardcore and Emo-Punk, and a nice balance between vocals, guitar riffs and a pounding rhythm section. However, Behind The Blackest Tears is less heavy and more melodic (‘softer’, if you want to), and much more predictable and evident.
Groove / Doom / Sludge / Hardcore with a mainstream approach…

60/100
_________________________________

Band: Dekapitator
Title: We Will Destroy… You Will Obey!!!
Release date: June 21st 2011
Review: CD

Another mostly interesting re-release through Relapse, originally released in 1999 via Blackmetal.com Records, a year after their split with NunSlaughter. Produced and mastered by James Murphy at Sound Temple Studios!

Dekapitator… Originally formed in California by two Exhumed-members, Col Jones (d) and Matt Harvey (v, g). After the release of the debut full length, Dekapitator went silent almost completely, yet the band never officially broke up. They returned in 2007 with The Storm Before The Calm, on Relapse as well.

Retro-Thrash, the neatest way, pure to the core, repelling any form of modernism, paying tribute to the Old School but with an own identity. It’s safe yet, at the same time, adventurous, it’s Art and Un-Art as well. It’s solid, limited to the pure essence of THRASH!
The lyrical approach is somewhat silly. What to think about titles like Total Fucking Slaughter, Possessed With Damnation, Hell’s Metal, Faceripper or Attack With Mayhem? Seriously, this has not been written to impress any philosopher or psychologist, yet I think it fits exactly! And then the vocals that are the audible expression of those chants… Matt has an impressing hoarse barking throat, and one cannot ignore the exceptional Metal-breathing guest vocals by members of, for example, Impaled, Cranium and Dawn. Metal shouts with one goal: bang your head!
The high-speed riffed anthems include rather unique and truly incorporated solos (apparently, James Murphy pushed these guys to better their solo works and to push it beyond any limit), which is largely differing from some of the same influences that inspired other elements, like that riffing, or the well-timed breaks. The rhythm section too is remarkable for being really supportive: basically on the back ground and not necessarily meant to outgrow the totality of each track, yet exactly involved and of undeniable importance.

Receipt: mix a handful of Thrash Americain (very early Metallica, Exodus, Sadus, Nuclear Assault) with germanised Teutonism (Sodom, Kreator), spice it up with some Scandinavian blackness (Bewitched, Aura Noir, Nocturnal Breed, Bathory) and some old-matured Low-Lands bloodiness (the earliest years of Pestilence, Dead Head and related grotesquery), flavour it with hints of Motörhead and NWOBHM (some solos indeed are highly influenced by acts like Iron Maiden or Judas Priest), add some Necrodeath- and Bulldozer-elements, and steam all of it in a fog of Possessed / Venom-ish sulphur. Finally, don’t forget to Speed ‘n’ Roll the mush… Tasteful mind-poison, I’m hungry, I can’t get enough of it.

We Will Destroy… comes with four bonus tracks, and including these ones, the re-packaged and re-mastered album lasts for forty seven minutes.

--/100
(no final result for being a re-release, yet with an initial score of 90/100 in 1999)
_________________________________

Band: General Surgery
Title: Necrology
Release date: June 21st 2011
Review: (M)CD (re-release)

Re-releases mostly have two reasons: money-making or melancholy. Especially the re-release of very old material usually has to do with the second option, and this goes as well for the re-issue of Kult-recording Necrology by General Surgery. The original recordings of this vinyl-EP took place at the über-famous Sunlight Studios (back then known for bands like Grave, Entombed, Centinex, Comecon, Rosicrucian a.o.) and Relapse were already in the picture.
This re-mastered EP (21:18, including the bonus songs, taken from the Pestisferous Anthropophagia-demo; it had been re-issued before on the 2003-vinyl-compilation Demos, released through Buio Omega Records) was recorded in 1990 by Matti Kärki (b, v; of e.g. Dismember / Murder Squad / Carnage / Carbonized / Therion-fame), Joachim Carlsson (g; Afflicted, Face Down; he’s the only guy still active in the band, which did break up for almost a decade during the nineties), Grant McWilliams (v) and Mats Nordrup (d; Afflicted, Regurgitate, Crematory) and was very, very comparable to what Carcass were doing back then. General Surgery performed (and still performs) gore-soaked and primitive yet varying Grindcore / Death Metal from the oldest school with the same technical and brutal approach as Carcass. The equilibrium between fast, almost punkish explosions and low-tuned, slowly pounding decelerations keeps the whole successfully in balance, the dual vocals (deep grunts versus a guttural throat) interfere correctly with the primal riffs and technical instrumental performance, and the sound might be somewhat muddy, yet does this not exhale the purity from the past?
RECOMMENDED if you’re an Old School Death-Grind fan with a passionate adoration of earlier Carcass (or skip if you consider them some Carcass-rip-off, a remark I did read and hear more than once).

--/100
_________________________________

Ivan Tibos.