Animosity - "Animal"

Animosity - You Can't Win (Metal Blade/Blackmarket Activities 2007)

Animosity - Animal / Metal Blade / Blackmarket Activities

In my last review (Severe Torture's Sworn Vengeance), as well as my Death Breath review, I made mention of how recording technology has negatively affected metal's sound over the past 10 years or so. First, drum triggers (devices used to process the actual sound of a drum through a computer into whatever sound you want) made it easier for drummers to play fast and accurately without trying as hard. Speed was limited when drummers actually had to hit hard in order for a microphone to pick up their sound. Now, even the slightest tap can be a thundering boom. Channel that mechanized sound into Pro-Tools and everything else falls into line, digitally. When albums are recorded like this, the sweat that goes into playing a type of music as demanding as death metal is marginalized. While this overly sterile approach doesn't really work for a number of bands, there are a few groups with a mechanized, relentless style that work well within a precise, overly accurate recording. One of these bands is San Francisco's Animosity.

Their 2003 Tribunal Records debut, Shut It Down was a decent-enough deathcore romp, made slightly more impressive by the fact that their average age was reported to be 16 at the time. 2005's Empires on Metal Blade/Blackmarket Activities was unlike anything else that came out that year. I must have listened to that album hundreds of times. Clocking in at only 27 minutes, the nine songs on Empires were short—but not concise—blasts of hardcore-laced death metal with a host of aggressive and complex twists. Riffs spiraled and changed without warning, about a hundred per song, but the songs retained a sense of direction rather than just randomly ending up at a huge breakdown for no reason other than to end the song. After that flurry of an album, my interest was piqued.

October 2007 brings us the follow-up album, Animal. Recorded with Kurt Ballou at his Godcity Studios, the production is a nice mix of Ballou's chaotic style (Converge, The Power & the Glory) and Animosity's accuracy, which adds just enough edge to make Empires sound as if it were recorded in an operating room. Sonically, everything is in place, but sounds as if it had to rush to get there . . . like all of the instruments are a little out of breath. Animosity's exactitude needs this style of recording, though . . . with so much happening, a sloppy recording wouldn't do their chops justice.

My initial complaint with Empires was that the drums were actually too busy for what the guitars, bass, and vocalist were doing. It's hard to imagine an overly-technical band having a drummer that's too busy, but when Animosity decide to ride out a riff for a few seconds (which seems like an eternity after you've been pummeled mercilessly for a few minutes) drummer Navene Koperwies needed to show restraint. This is a trait he seems to have found within himself for the recording of Animal, holding back more when the riff doesn't demand him to be flashy.

Again, the songs range from about two minutes to the album-closer "A Passionate Journey," which ends up at just over four minutes after an extended drum outro. Overall, Animal's songs end up in the two-and-a-half minute mark, which is just enough when there's a million things happening at once. It's impossible to describe an average Animosity song, but there's more changes than you can shake a stick at, and how they're able to explain song structure to one another during the writing process is beyond me. It's pure insanity with a running time similar to that of Empires, this Animal ceasing to exist at the 28-minute mark.

One other reason why fans of intense, unrelenting music should pick this up is for the vocals of Leo Miller. His defeatist, anti-war attitude comes across loud and clear in the lyrics on Animal ("I look ahead on our path / and all I see is fucking doom / plunder and rape"), but it's the way he's able to bob and weave his vocal patterns in and out of the band's ridiculous complexity is unbelievable. Musical accents match vocal accents; pauses come at just the right time . . . the pacing is just excellent. Some lyrics feel crammed into place, but that just comes with the tech territory. Most of the time, Miller succeeds in getting a lot of words in a very small spot. Vocal arrangement are often overlooked in metal, but the only way you're going to really get a feel for how amazingly difficult this can be is to get the album and literally follow along with the lyrics. It's a lost art, that lyric reading , but totally worth it on Animal.

The prowess these youngsters display on only their third album is extraordinary. Basically, if you can't handle the heat, you're going to need to get out of the kitchen, because Animosity crank the heat way up on this record. Chances are, this album is going to whiz by in what seems like a lot less than its 28-minute running time, which makes Animal a perfect contender for repeat listens, almost daring you to try and absorb everything presented on this disc without becoming overwhelmed in the process.

Severe Torture - "Sworn Vengeance"

Severe Torture - Serenity Torn Asunder

Severe Torture - Sworn Vengeance / Earache

One of the best things about death metal is that it's never going to go away. Never. There's always going to be people looking for the craziest, most over-the-top style of music (which seems to be why a lot of metal dudes end up really liking experimental music or free jazz). A lot of death metal fans are slaves to precision in the genre. This has led, over the years, to a very mechanical sound on a lot of death-metal albums. Striving to achieve sonic perfection in order to showcase how talented they are, the original idea of the music—to be as fucking brutal as possible—is lost in the ones and zeros, completely defeating the purpose of death metal. Other bands have no budget and sound really sloppy and shitty, which can work if your band is a little rough around the edges (see: grindcore bands). Holland's Severe Torture definitely fall into the former category of precise brutality, but their music has a very punk-rock feel to it . . . if you catch my vibes, maaaaaan.

After releasing their first album in 2001 (Feasting on Blood), and a follow-up in 2002 (Misanthropic Carnage) on Karmageddon Records, the band made a label jump to Earache with 2005's Fall of the Despised, a pretty slick album that was somewhat unremarkable musically, but had great cover art. After being pushed back from September to November of 2007, the world is finally getting the fourth album from Severe Torture.

Like mentioned above, these guys have a nice punk feel in way they write their songs. Sure, there's plenty of palm-muting and double bass drum action, but there's a loose, fun feel to the songs. One of the many obstacles to overcome when playing death metal is to make the songs not only brutal, but interesting to listen to (and, I'm assuming is the case for most bands, fun to play) and dissect. Severe Torture doesn't rely strictly on blasting and insanely complex riffs to get their point across. There's plenty of thrashy riffs, and the guitar work underneath the blast beats is usually pretty straightforward. Recorded cleanly, but written in a way that the riffs don't just sound like mush under a flurry of drums and vocals. You can have the cleanest recording in the history of music, and if the riffs are too busy for their own good, it's going to sound like garbage when played at a million miles per hour (especially in a live setting).

"Repeat Offender" is a great example of a death-metal band that understands tempo in their chosen genre. It's pretty mid-tempo for the most part, and drummer Seth Van De Loo switches to blasts only when the riff becomes faster and then immediately slows back down to accommodate the rest of the band when they decide that fast-time is over.

The song immediately following "Repeat Offender," "Countless Villains," is an all-slow affair, a full-count setting you up for the high-heat fastball of "Dogmasomatic Nausea," one of the many fast songs on the album.

Fast is really what Severe Torture do best, bassist Patrick Boleij doing his best Alex Webster impression and hanging with the guitar riffs like he was born to play in a death-metal rhythm section. Believe it or not, with all of the shit the bass guitar gets in metal (you can never hear it/no one pays attention to it), it really is an important part of the listening experience. It just takes a talented bassist to make his mark on an album. Guitars not doing much? How about a little bass flourish? Take a listen at 55 seconds into album-opener "Dismal Perception" for a little bass accent that not only fills up some empty musical space, but adds a little melody that the main riff eventually brings to the forefront. I don't know if it's the exact, same notes, but it sounds close.

"Buried Hatchet" finds Jason Netherton (Misery Index, ex-Dying Fetus) and Che Snelping (ex-Born From Pain) both contributing guest vocals (and another little bass zazz at the start of the track!), and the title track follows. The longest song on the album, it's a 5:18 riff marathon that ends in a slow fade-out, segueing into album-closer, "Submerged in Grief." A slow, instrumental song, it's the perfect way to round out an album that's been challenging your ears and brain for over half an hour.

The Red Chord - "Prey For Eyes"

The Red Chord - It Runs in the Family (Metal Blade/Black Market Activities 2007)

The Red Chord - Prey For Eyes - Metal Blade / Black Market Activities

It's been obvious from 2002's Fused Together in Revolving Doors (Robotic Empire) that there's something different . . . something not quite right about the Red Chord. As with many debuts, the listener has no idea what they're in for. With the knowledge that then-drummer Mike Justian has previously played for lesser-known hardcore outfit Hassan I Sabbah, I eagerly listened to Fused repeatedly, allowing lyrics like, "I'd like nothing better than to sever your head and set that pig on fire" and "it's not going to be all right; it's not going to be OK," sink in and do their dirty work. Plus, the album was a lesson in making hardcore-laced metal songs interesting, saving the sweet, crooning choruses for radio bands and relying instead on musicianship and unbridled anger to get their points across.

Fused Together made quite a splash in the "extreme" music world, with Metal Blade snatching up the band and vocalist Guy Kozowyk landing his label Black Market Activities a distribution deal in the process. Three years and a lineup change later (which found Justian leaving the band), the band released their second album, Clients, a loose concept album centered around various run-ins with regular crazies Kozowyk encountered while working as a pharmacist. Songs like "Antman" and "Black Santa" are clearly based off nicknames given to frequent visitors of the pill counter, which added a nice human element to Clients, along with the continued barrage of riffs, blastbeats, and bizarre lyrics ("I'm almost sorry that I must do this to get my name in lights").

Two years have passed since Clients, and the Red Chord have managed to keep their music as interesting as it was five years ago, which may not seem like a long time, but may as well be an eternity in the metal/hardcore world, where debut albums sprout up and give birth to carbon-copy discographies all the fucking time. Hatebreed, anyone? 2007's Prey For Eyes again takes the band's music one step further (and introduces yet another drummer), creating an album that's destructive, musical artwork.

Beginning with the minute-long frenzy "Film Critiques and Militia Men," the Red Chord showcase every tempo from slow, beatdown riffs to disjointed, Discordance Axis-style blasting, with the guitar line inching along and the drums grinding away with little regard for the stringed instruments' tempo. This pattern continues over the course of Prey For Eyes, each song a well-organized outburst of ideas somehow corralled into a cohesive but demanding listen. Themes appear throughout the duration of songs like "Send the Death Storm," popping up in one form or another but backed by a different drum pattern or second-guitar accent, evolving slowly. Before you know it, the song has moved from the beginning to the point of no return.

So finely are the Red Chord's songs constructed that it's never too obvious where a verse, chorus, bridge—or anything else—begins, ends, heads off to, comes back from, or when it completely abandons you. The pieces of each song meld seamlessly into one another, adding to the band's steamroller effect. This density, while appreciated for its force, can be overwhelming with the guitar and bass somewhat buried (of course . . . this is metal!) below Kozowyk's various vocal variants (low, high, yelled, gurgled) and newest drummer Brad Fickeisen's incredibly clean-sounding drum kit. There's plenty of crunch when the guitars are chugging along, but more intricate elements of the faster riffs sometimes prove to be a conundrum when the track's setting moves from "ear chop" to "aural puree." Minus a pair of headphones, the listener just needs to concentrate on the music instead of letting it ramble on in the background.

And therein lies the balance of a good, technical metal/hardcore album: forcing you to listen closely while at the same time doing its best to make sure you feel as uncomfortable as possible: "Thanks for listening, hope this hurts!" The Red Chord generally find this balance, but go one step further, letting you catch your breath with the mid-paced instrumental "It Came From Over There," just to knock it back out of you with "Intelligence Has Been Compromised."

The album closes like both previous Red Chord records have, with a six-minute-plus track of slow-building termination (although Fused Together's last track was a noise piece that seemed more like a final "fuck off, we're really trying to decimate you" to the listener), and ends with what sounds like a funeral march on the snare drum. Yes, you’ve killed me . . . I appreciate the built-in memorial service.