ALBUM REVIEWS II - Music - http://maxpages.com/aeazine/ALBUM_REVIEWS

Life Of Agony River Runs Again: Live 2003 SPV/Steamhammer
I for one am pleased that founding vocalist Keith Caputo and drummer Sal Abruscato joined to perform Life of Agony’s reunion shows, since they were in the band since unsung classics like “No Sympathy” and “Dying on the Inside” from their earliest demos. As far as I’m concerned; and I’m sure many share this sentiment; Caputo is the only singer who can bare his soul in exactly the way his lyrics deemed necessary, though they’re less angry than in the demo days. Abruscato fits in simply because he rounds out a lineup that still works naturally well together. If you missed them at Irving Plaza this past January (this was when River Runs Again was taped, and tickets for both nights sold out), those shows weren’t one-shot but rather marked L.O.A.’s official reformation. Next month, you’ll have a live album to prepare you for their return to New York this December. A DVD release with the usual interviews and tour footage is planned to coincide with the CD. River Runs Again has the feeling of a hardcore show, from being able to hear the crowd over the soundboard in between songs. The joking from some of the audience and the ovation that comes later during Caputo’s acoustic version of “Let’s Pretend” is the most honest impression of this even if not set to harder music. All that’s missing is having the microphone passed to people up front during the songs themselves. The reason for this is probably because there’s such a big following for the band they have to address everyone on a grand scale, and the mike is the only way to do so. But the band play as if they are still headlining CBGB matinees, and the chemistry displayed in songs from River Runs Red, Ugly and Soul Searching Sun explain the sea of imitators resulting from opening for Ozzy and Type O Negative to larger crowds. The bonus tracks from side projects Keith Caputo, Among Thieves and Supermassiv retain their collective feeling in their own way.

Skinless From Sacrifice to Survival Relapse
Hailed nationally in Metal Maniacs as “one of the hardest working and powerful live acts in the world,” Skinless build on the momentum they gained from a touring process that may or may not be as extensive as their peers’, but From Sacrifice to Survival has a resolve speaking of climbing the ladder plainly enough. Skinless have been writing with more emphasis on tempo changes, as the times they degenerate from blast to groove has increased in frequency since Foreshadowing Our Demise. Slower paced sections enter a song to release the momentum the collected during the blast parts. If I divined what they’re doing correctly, the progression from fast to slow to slower provides a different kind of brutality than most death metallers are accustomed to. As the musical score to humankind’s eternal conclusion it’s an interesting way to put across the brutality-through-pessimism approach to the lyrics in “The Front Line of Sanity” and “From Sacrifice to Survival” which starts groove-laden after the preceding acoustic piece “A False Sense of Security” sets a dismal tone elaborated on by diatribes on how the end was planned from the start by false messiahs who promised salvation with the end of time but up and saved themselves when it came. The blast beat in this latter song comes after the song is underway but the effect of music and lyrics is no less profound. Guitarist Noah Carpenter and drummer John Longstreth deserve accolades for the work they put into composing these songs.

Disfear Misanthropic Generation Relapse
Spawning its endless legion of black and melodic death bands, Sweden is probably the last place you’d expect a band to originate from reminding you of the Exploited. In fact, you rarely if ever hear of Swedish hardcore in metal publications. But here it is staring you in the face, and an interesting glimpse into the social, religious and political woes hardcore bands write of in New York, Long Island and California from a Swedish perspective. It is a lot like the Exploited and Discharge as far as Bjorn Pettersson’s dirty guitars and Gu Anderson’s mid-tempo percussion backing them up goes, except the songs’ length as well as the lyrics are longer than as written by a U.S. or U.K. hardcore band, and this is what sets Disfear apart from punk rock and hardcore. I heard some Venom-ish metallic chaos ending a couple songs and shades of Motorhead-style biker rock blended into these songs; the bassline by Frykman opening “Never Gonna Last” sounds uncannily to how Lemmy Kilminster introduced “Ace of Spades,” and the whole song sounds centered on the same vibe! Tomas Lindberg’s vocals is one of the things giving Disfear their hardcore feeling. Here he doesn’t sound at all as he did in At The Gates but rather a drunk, pissed off punk rocker who’s ready to go onstage and provoke a violent mosh pit.

Trivium Ember to Inferno LifeForce
To Trivium, music is more of a linguistic than a form of expression. However pretentious you may consider this attitude, it’s probably why they represent themselves well on Ember to Inferno. The Florida band’s debut is a calculated exercise to take metal’s more extreme forms to new levels of respectability, leaking them into mainstream post-thrash in degrees that reinforce themselves until you just have to stand back and watch when the endeavor’s complete. This venture is hardly an inconsequential one, nor can it be labeled nu-metal. Trivium demonstrate how meticulously hometown brutal death metal can be merged with Swedish melodic death metal as their roots in thrash and power metal outline the structure that keeps everything organized. You might be hearing a lot from Matt Heafy if ample publicity should ensue from this album. Before it was even recorded, he received the Golden Skull for best guitarist from the Orlando Metal Awards while their demo was still circulating (you can still sample it from trivium.org; don’t bootleg it!) while the band’s reach extended all the way to the other side of the Atlantic early this year when Trivium made February’s Band of the Month on SwedishMetal.net. It doesn’t take long after the album starts to discover this band have their act together as they tackle riffs and tempo changes with a mechanical precision that’s almost frightening even if you may think their influences in death metal are diluted by the other elements they brought to their songs. Handling the riffs he arranged with bassist Brent Young and drummer Travis Smith, Heafy shows his precision as a guitarist without drowning out the rest of the band. The mournful refrains interspersed into the more aggressive riffs he writes reveal extreme anguish behind the rage and frustration he projects as lead singer; with the melodic vocals he reverts to having equal impact. Since Ember to Inferno was released Corey Beaulieu was hired by the band as a second guitarist, so perhaps we’ll see how Trivium come across with two guitarists on the next album.

Havochate This Violent Earth Root Of All Evil
It takes a certain amount of cojones for a virtually unknown band to pursue an opening slot for Manowar as they’re still preparing to release their first album, but Havochate went for it, and received more support than one may have expected from most bands who just started out a few years earlier. As risky a move as it was, Havochate obviously made the smart decision since they generated enough fan support to demand another opening slot to coincide with This Violent Earth, this time with Motorhead and Anthrax. Recorded in its earliest incarnation back in 2001, it was painstakingly constructed under the production of James Murphy, who after working with Death, Testament and Obituary has had enough experience with thrash and death metal to bring Havochate’s most promising traits to light, working to make the guitars’ roots in thrash as prominent as the band themselves made their groove-oriented songwriting. It was another smart move for guitarist Freddy Ordine and drummer Ovie Rodriguez to hire Jon Mallek as lead vocalist over the “Limp Biskit wanna-bes” they auditioned while forming the band. Inspired by the presence Rob Halford gave Judas Priest in the 70’s and 80’s, Mallek’s presence as frontman justifies the relentless heaviness projected from behind. By listening to just a few songs from this album you see how enthusiastic he is about forging ahead with the band. His Chuck Billy-worthy throat contributes much more than a Limp Biskit wanna-be would have contributed to the band if chosen in Mallek’s place. Even more “groovy” than the bands James Murphy produced in the past, the music backing Mallek up doesn’t rely as much on subtleties or overlong buildups that many bands write into their albums, usually taking just a couple of bars to prepare the listener for what’s to come next until it grabs you by the throat. There’s also plenty of “non-groovy” thrash riffs to be found, such as the Slayer-esque mood of the title track, “Cyclical Life,” “Right to Die” and “Drenched in Sweat,” which thrash with uncompromising fury to provide a convincing balance between the groove overtones of “Years of Abhorrence” and “When God Dies.”

Over Kill Killbox 13 Spitfire
I was checking out the individual and group shots of Over Kill on the inner sleeve and liner notes of Killbox 13, and was struck with how much of a profound, even weathered, maturity has taken the place of the raw youthful energy I picked up in the pictures gracing the cover art of Feel the Fire and Taking Over. This seems pretty much an accurate representation of where they’ve been heading musically since I Hear Black marked their return in the early nineties. I could say that being involved in making music for twenty years hasn’t weathered the energy that ran through their veins while recording those albums, and I wouldn’t be guilty of just writing some fluff piece for their sake because keeping their vision through a period filled with turbulence for old school thrash bands who spent the decade teetering between nostalgia and oblivion seems to have bolstered their resolve to retain that vigor, and redirect it through tighter, calculated guitar riffs and melodic hooks. If The Osbournes shows how classic metal ages gracefully, you could easily give Over Kill a guest spot via Ozzfest footage. Blitz Ellsworth definitely has a sense of this sort of wisdom that comes with experience from the way he projects the ideas behind lyrics like “the more I live, the more I find out” in “Damned.” You might be disappointed if you’re expecting to hear the same Bobby Gustafson-fueled thrash anthems as “In Union We Stand” or “Hello From the Gutter” that gave Over Kill a rabid following in thrash’s heyday but seeing this album from another perspective you’ll discover a deeper meaning hidden in subtler forms like the fade out in “No Lights” and D.D. Verni’s signature basslines underscoring the catchy choruses of “Devil by the Tail” and “The One.” The Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden influence in “Crystal Clear” and “Struck Down” further expound on the maturity Over Kill’s songwriting achieved, but the real power lies in images of a lone killer stalking the streets of an obscure New Jersey suburb in “The Sound of Dying,” followed by malevolent overtones and inner turmoil in “Until I Die.” For some reason these songs reminded me of the deranged murderer personified by the “Over Kill” saga who, despite having faded into obscurity long ago, still remains a threat to society, and decided to leave his mark again.

Torniquet Where Moth and Rust Destroy Metal Blade
Tourniquet was co-founded by drummer Ted Kirkpatrick, who has already been featured in Modern Drummer magazine twice. Although the band provide interesting allegories on mankind’s greed versus inner spiritual fulfillment, what I found more interesting than the Biblical references on Where Moth and Rust Destroy was the influence he brings to Tourniquet’s music from classical composers like Bach and Beethoven besides the rhythmic sounds he adopted from nature during his excursions to the jungles of places like Brazil and Malaysia. Along with more traditional infliuences like Buddy Rich and Terry Bozzio, Kirkpatrick fuses all of this into a percussive style serving as the strongest backbone of his band’s sound, which mixes classical themes into classic thrash metal riffs and modernized atmosphere best suited to Swedish melodic death metal. Kirkpatrick contributes experience with classical guitars into Tourniquet’s formula while ejaculating energetic Neil Peart-reminiscent drum solos from underneath mid-tempo speed metal riffs, which makes for an interesting listen all around. The inclusion of progressive jazz into the power metal epic “Healing Waters of the Tigris” and melancholy violins in the Candlemass-like doom-laden riffing of “In Death We Rise” are more unexpected turns delivered in a way that gives the band a unique identity. A lot of this album reminded me of old Anthrax with the mid-tempo beats and guitar crunching. My only problems with this was the production sounded too weak to do justice to the material’s inventiveness, the vocals could have been more aggressive and while there are many interesting tempo changes that take place during each song with equally interesting chord progressions; the classical introduction to the eight-minute “Drawn and Quartered” comes to mind; some riffs sound too far removed from each other and could have been tightened up just a little in this regard.

Obscene Eulogy A Portal Into Fire Baphomet/Red Stream
As Obscene Eulogy’s debut release, A Portal Into Fire seems to encompass the potential to take the black/death metal crossover between in newer directions similar to the potential Wurdalak showed on their debut. In case you weren’t aware Obscene Eulogy consists partly of members of Impaled Nazarene, another band I should still be covering as much as the other bands I’ve been covering of late. After coming across this information through Red Stream I’ve a sneaking suspicion the vocals here belong to none other than Mika Luttinen though I’ve yet to find out for a fact. The band’s name also makes sense, resonating with the special kind of unclean blasphemy Impaled bring to their music. The label classifies A Portal Into Fire as death metal but elements of black metal are added into the mix as plainly as the material recorded by Impaled and techno-black metal side projects Diabolos Rising and Raism members of Impaled Nazarene have been involved in. I am assuming these bands are still active today; if so and Red Stream are releasing their material I’d like to hear what new music they have out to review here as well. The keyboard passage introducing this is somewhere between Mercyful Fate with “The Oath” and the dark ambient music Mortiis is known for. The searing guitars that emerge afterward are abrasive and technical, placing choppy riffs above double bass percussion that sounds precise enough to be programming. I’m not sure if the band use programming or a live drummer, but some of the fills accent the guitars in a natural way that suggests the latter. The guitars often revert to dissonant chords made even rawer by the keyboards accompanying them. Together with fierce vocals that screech like their owner is possessed by a savage demon, Obscene Eulogy is the sonic equivalent of having sandpaper dragged across an open, gaping wound as it thrashes more and more relentlessly as it goes on.

Lymphatic Phlegm Pathogenesis Infest Phlegmsepsia Black Hole Productions
Whether Lymphatic Phlegm had Carcass in mind while writing this album is yet to be determined; I’d have to personally ask them where their inspiration originated since I was strongly reminded of the grindcore classic Symphonies of Sickness by what I heard. As far as I know they don’t have an official site though I tried to find out if Black Hole Productions linked them and I could learn more about their history. I just know they’ve been playing around Brazil for about seven years and from all appearances they have their act together. Judging from the professional way they arranged the packaging alone, before you even hear the album, you can tell they harbor an insatiable appetite for composing the goriest, most filth-ridden splatterfest they can conjure. Then there’s the inner sleeve with its extensive details on the proper protocol for conducting autopsies, complete with graphic photographs. This gives you a nice little guideline to work with while listening to samples the band borrow from gore flicks depicting medical deviates hacking up innocent subjects for gruesome experiments. The credits coming afterward say Pathogenesis Infest Phlegmsepsia was recorded over a period of four days and mixed over two. The only likeness to Carcass is in the vocals that share delivery of enunciating words through a mouthful of leeches, or long-dead cadaveric parts. The percussion sounds provided by a drum machine which makes the time changes sound very rigid for the guitars and bass which are played with almost enough atmosphere to pass for black metal. The band are obviously putting plenty of effort into their lyrical imagery, that often surpasses the pictures established by Carcass in their heyday in songs like “Recessive Dystrophic Epiudermolysis Bullosa,” “Hemmorhagical Affection of the Uterine Tract” and “Traumatic Obstetric Cerebro-meningeal Hemmorhage,” among other titles too lengthy to print without taking up too much space here. I’m still trying to figure out what was happening in the first sample the band used on this album, whether the female voice was moaning in ecstasy, agony, or both. I want to ask the band about the movie they borrowed it from.

The Exploited Fuck the System Spitfire
With a simple three-word declaration as the title of the first collection of angry punk songs they’ve released since 1996, the Exploited explode into a world that’s more pacified than ever, defying a society that would rather their subversive style of music faded away forever. They proclaim this defiance much as they did when their 1981 debut Punk’s Not Dead had a hand in revitalizing a movement started by the Sex Pistols and the Clash years earlier, riding a second wave of rebellious musicians speaking out against the problems in their country that weren’t improving any when “Anarchy in the U.K.” spoke out against the United Kingdom’s rising unemployment and the resulting social unrest. I’m not sure if F—k the System will revolutionize punk rock on the same level as the 80’s since it’s gone through so many changes and those days of unrest the first punk bands railed against are long gone. But from the band’s perspective there are still social issues to address in the world today, besides the fact that the genre has been commercialized and made to support the same corporations that contributed to the problems those bands sang about. And they have a history of being among the more vocal of the bunch as far as challenging authority to get their point across. I remember a show I went to see of theirs in which they braved a multitude of projectiles hurled at them by a hostile crowd and continued playing. From their stage presence alone, I could see they’re unafraid to brave retribution for what they have to say. There are no issues specifically referred to here; “Lie to Me,” “Never Sell Out” and “Chaos is My Life” are general tirades leaving it open for the listener to direct toward any target. The raw energy the Exploited put into their simplistic, repetitive guitar progressions produces an effect on you that makes you want to scream along with them as persuasively as the likes of GBH and Discharge did in their inception, while there are some more modernized themes like solitary bass lines mixed in with all this. If you happen to be in England May 16th, be sure to see the Exploited at the City Invasion fest with the Business, Broken Bones and M.D.C.

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Page Updated Thu Jul 22, 2004 8:40pm EDT