Monday, March 17, 2014

Karnivore "In The Halls of the Wicked"

   


(Lake of Fire records)

 Karnivore are a three piece death metal band from Sweden who have suffered a number of line-up changes.  The biggest blow the band suffered was losing a guitarist to cancer.   The present band line up is Martin Holmqvist(vocals),  Jens Englund(guitars/bass), Mattias Johansson(drums).


The band clearly have a huge love of the letter substitution game, which is not only obvious from their chosen handle but that they chose to name their debut album "The Triumphant Khaoz".  However they decided to not play the double V game with their latest platter "In The Halls of The Wicked".  The album opens slowly and quietly with the sound of the wind mixed with synths in "The Underground" and this is soon blown away as Karnivore plunge head first into death metal territory with blast-beats and vocals that edge between audibly clear grunts that verge on singing and much rawer growls.  


   "Feast Upon the Living" originates with a quick and dirty raw death metal sound though later in the song there is a symphonic sound to the guitar, which gives the tune a much cleaner feel.   The thrash metal influence becomes much clearer in "An Era of Decay" as the rhythm section speeds proceedings up somewhat although the vocals are deathly grunts.  "Psycho" alternates between blast-beats, grunts, thrash metal with somewhat clearer death metal style vocals.


Despite a few of the songs blurring together and overstaying their welcome due to their length, "In The Halls of The Wicked" is an enjoyable album.  However, it's hard to shake the feeling that the band is still growing as sometimes the cleaner sound doesn't really work and may end up alienating a number of death metal fans. 


3/5


Karnivore on facebook










Sunday, March 16, 2014

Home "Bound To Gravity"



As a longtime supporter of the underground it's always great whenever a band takes the time to email me rather than just go through a label or a publicist. I'll admit I appreciate hearing from labels and publicists too if they actually have taken the time to look through the blog and realize whether or not the music they are currently pushing fits with the blog.  The amount of rap and country music that comes my way astounds me as it just doesn't fit with the context on the blog.  Anyway enough about the blog and back to the recent email(it was actually received in late February), I really wanted to talk about.  It came from Austria from a guy named Amadeus who said his band Home were Austrian Sludge/Stoner/Post-whatsoever and that because it was release day of their album "Bound to Gravity", the trio were going to get drunk.

On listening to the first track it became apparent that post-whatsoever really means post hardcore as there is a bit of both Quicksand and Fugazi in both the music and the vocals.  The sludge label makes sense for the track "Next To Last", though the song opens with stripped bare metallic riffing, the vocals recall the likes of Killdozer and Clawhammer.  There's no prettying things up here.

I'm willing to bet that "Not Even Me" is a live favourite and unites hardcore and metal kids only to battle it together in the pit before the abrasively raw sludge applies sandpaper to their wounds.  Often the direction where Home go with their rhythms takes the listener by surprise and the unpredictability adds to their charm. The lengthy "Dead City" slowly pulsates with a Black Sabbath heart although Home take a more experimental turn with speeding up the rhythm and lightly applied sandpaper raw vocals.

The initial description of the band by Amadeus still rings true to my ears as this is likely to appeal equally to fans of Eyehategod style sludge, rawer post-hardcore and amphetamine reptile fans.  Check out "Bound to Gravity" on their bandcamp site linked below.

4/5


Bound To Gravity on bandcamp



Home on facebook




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