ALBUM REVIEW: Extremity, "Coffin Birth"

By: Daniel Jackson

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 20/07/2018

Label: 20 Buck Spin

To put out an album that stands out in what feels like a tidal wave of high quality releases is no small achievement, and the band should feel immense pride in what they’ve created here. This is mandatory listening.

‘Coffin Birth’ CD//LP//CS//DD track listing:

1. Coffin Birth / A Million Witches

2. Where Evil Dwells

3. Grave Mistake

4. Umbilicus

5. For Want of a Nail

6. Occision

7. Like Father like Son

8. Misbegotten / Coffin Death

The Review:

As seems to happen every so often, we’re in the midst of a gigantic death metal resurgence. Top notch albums are coming out from across the globe and the songwritings as good as it’s ever been. The added benefit this time around is that it isn’t all from one particular sub-style. In the past we’ve seen resurgences in early Incantation worship, Stockholm sweddeath, and others beyond. This time around, it just seems as though death metal as a whole is experiencing an uptick, with a number of bands putting it all together at the same time, across a range of styles.

In a way, Extremity embodies the entirety of death metal’s 2018 rebirth. The sonically massive recording, the inclusion of a wide range of influences, but all under death metal’s larger umbrella. As the album goes along, the songs invoke something familiar, but never outright worshipping a specific band. You’ll hear something that would feel at home on a Bolt Thrower album, or something that would feel at home on a Carnage or Unleashed album, and even early Death rears its head in some of the harmonized guitar leads. On ‘Coffin Birth’, Extremity takes all of these different sounds, and brings them together into a single, cohesive whole, and it fucking rules.

Each song on ‘Coffin Birth’ feels like a journey, rather than a compilation of great riffs. The band rarely ever dwell on the same idea for long, and each new place a song end up keeps the song interesting. Just looking at “For Want of a Nail” as an example: the song opens up with a lurching, climbing double kick section, before the tempo kicks up somewhat as twisting, limber riffs keep up with Aesop Dekker’s thrashy beat. After that, the song launches into an utterly crushing breakdown, in which Aesop Dekker’s masterful sense of groove and feel take center stage, the moment made all the more powerful by a breakdown riff that’s up there with “Master Butcher’s Apron” off of Carcass’ ‘Surgical Steel’, meaning it’s among the best of this decade. That’s not to mention the fantastic solo work that immediately follows, though I’m not certain which guitarist to credit Marissa Martinez-Hoadley or Shelby Lermo for it.

There’s so much going on in each and every song, and none of it ever feels forced, nor do the transitions ever feel unnatural. Each song is an ever-mutating creature unto itself and yet unified as one greater whole. ‘Coffin Birth’ is the work of musicians who’re at the height of their creative powers, standing out and claiming their own piece of an exceptional time in death metal history. To put out an album that stands out in what feels like a tidal wave of high quality releases is no small achievement, and the band should feel immense pride in what they’ve created here. This is mandatory listening.

‘Coffin Birth’ is available digitally on CD, LP, or Cassette here.

Band info: Facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: God Dethroned - ‘The World Ablaze’

By: Daniel Jackson

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 5/5/2017

Label: Metal Blade

If you’re a longtime fan like me, this album is everything you’d want and then some. ‘The World Ablaze’ is all of the best elements of the God Dethroned’s entire discography amalgamated into a single album.

‘The World Ablaze’ CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. A Call to Arms

2. Annihilation Crusade

3. The World Ablaze

4. On the Wrong Side of the Wire

5. Close to Victory

6. Konigsberg

7. Escape Across the Ice (The White Army)

8. Breathing Through Blood

9. Messina Ridge

10. The 11th Hour

The Review:

Please bear with me as I do this. I know reviews should never center around the person writing them, and as such, this won’t be a proper review. I will definitely get to the music, but with the album having already been out for more than a month now, and given other circumstances I’ll get into shortly; I want to explain why this album has the deep resonance with me that it does.

For metal fans over a certain age, getting turned on to a band via compilations was a pretty common occurrence. In this case, the compilation in question ‘Metal Blade’s ‘Deathmeister’ compilation, released in 1998. This comp was my first exposure to bands like Dark Funeral, Defleshed, Lord Belial and more, and all are bands I still listen to regularly.

The God Dethroned song featured on that comp was the title track from 1997’s classic ‘The Grand Grimoire’. It was absolutely ferocious. Combining Floridian death metal’s love for blazing, Slayer-loving tremolo with European death metal’s remarkable knack for melody, God Dethroned had a depth and range that I hadn’t really heard from a death metal band at that point. Before too long, the cassette I’d used to dub the comp for my Walkman was worn and warped from overuse, and God Dethroned was a big part of why that happened.

I’m grateful to have seen God Dethroned live on the ‘Death Metal Massacre 2000’ tour with Cannibal Corpse. Their set included songs from ‘The Grand Grimoire’ as well as their then new album ‘Bloody Blasphemy’. But it’s what happened prior to this show that leads me to essentially make this review about my experience and history with the band.

At the time of the show, I hadn’t yet turned 18 and didn’t have a car. My dad took me to the show and, as he often did, made sure to threaten my utter embarrassment at every turn by sticking around after dropping me off. He liked some metal, but only at a very surface, mainstream level. While I was waiting in line, he went to walk around and have a smoke. When he returned he explained that he’d happened to have a very quick chat with someone from one of the bands. That person turned out to be Henri from God Dethroned.

I can’t remember exactly what he said or what they talked about, other than him asking about what the name meant, and I remember feeling the earth crumbling beneath me and dread pounding through every vein in my body. But, to my surprise, my dad seemed to be happy with how the conversation went and even opted to stick around and listen to what he could from outside once the show started. From that point forward, God Dethroned was sort of his reference point for anything else I listened to:

“Oh, these guys aren’t as fast as God Dethroned.”

“This singer doesn’t have a powerful scream like the guy in God Dethroned.”

Every once in a while, even more than 15 years later, he’d ask about the band and what they were up to. He’d always bring them up as a way to mention him getting to talk to Henri. He was never one to pass up an opportunity to talk about something that made him sound cool, even if he’d talked about it before. As luck would have it, Dad had asked about God Dethroned in April, and I told him about the upcoming album, ‘The World Ablaze’, which was all he needed to launch into a conversation we’ve had dozens of times over the last 17 years.

At the end of May, my dad died of a heart attack brought on by long term health problems at the age of 64. At first, I was hesitant to listen to this album, for obvious reasons. But as time passed my apprehension gave way to something like warm nostalgia. As I went back and listened to the band’s earlier albums, I smiled to myself. I imagined the site of my painfully uncool dad talking to Henri, one of the great death metal vocalists of all time. What an absurd couple of minutes that must have been.

I know nothing about the afterlife, and I doubt there’s one at all. But if there is, I’ll be glad to tell him how good this album was, just to give him a reason to tell that old story again.

When I finally listened to ‘The World Ablaze’ for the first time since my dad’s death, that warm feeling washed over me, just as it had with the early albums. While I’ve enjoyed everything the band have put out—to varying degrees—the albums released after ‘Into The Lungs Of Hell’ felt like they were missing something. A minor “something”, but something nonetheless. With this album, they’ve gained all of it back in a big fucking way.

God Dethroned is at their best when they keep a balance between riveting viciousness and gut-wrenching melody, and this album hits both of these touchstones as well as one could hope. ‘The World Ablaze’ is an inspired work from a band at a new creative peak. All of the raw emotional energy of ‘The Grand Grimoire’ and ‘Bloody Blasphemy’ are present and strong. The infernal catchiness of ‘Ravenous’ and the added heft and sonic power of the band’s mid 2000s material is here as well, and it’s been improved after the band’s long break between albums.

If you’re a longtime fan like me, this album is everything you’d want and then some. ‘The World Ablaze’ is all of the best elements of the God Dethroned’s entire discography amalgamated into a single album. There’s a personal connection I have to this album that probably won’t exist for other people, but this is an album that stands proudly on its own musical merits.

“The World Ablaze’ is available digitally here and a CD/LP copy here.

Band info: Facebook || bandcamp

FFO: Necrophobic, Behemoth, Hail of Bullets, Unleashed

Unleashed - 'Dawn of the Nine' (Album Review)

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 24/04/2015

Label: Nuclear Blast Records

‘Dawn of The Nine’ CD//DD track listing:

1. A New Day Will Rise  3:51

2. They Came To Die  3:13

3. Defenders Of Midgard  4:37

4. Where Is Your God Now?  4:29

5. The Bolt Thrower  3:49

6. Let The Hammer Fly  4:10

7. Where Churches Once Burned  5:18

8. Land Of The Thousand Lakes  4:15

9. Dawn Of The Nine  6:41

10. Welcome The Son Of Thor!  4:34

Unleashed is

Johnny | vocals, bass
Tomas | guitars
Fredrik | guitars
Anders | drums

Review:

Yep, Unleashed are one of those bands that I ALWAYS meant to listen to and get into... but never did. My laziness has most likely denied me years of quality listening. Ridiculously, I even saw them live in 2006 (Masters of Death Tour, I think) having bought tickets to see Dismember primarily, then turned up to find out I had missed them. I settled in to watch Unleashed instead and was very impressed- death metal for sure, but very much in the Swedish style without endless blast beats but with great riffs and hooks. Nearly ten years later, I have finally got around to listening to them properly with this, their latest record. Johnny Hedlund remains in place as the big man at the front, rumbling bass and Swe-death vocals present and correct.

The twelfth (!) album in this veteran band’s canon features the Norse themes of past records interwoven as a story, I believe. If you like your mythology, or Asatru or whatever you would call it, there will be things for you to enjoy here.

Opener “A New Day Will Rise” and the second track “They Came to Die” set the stall out admirably. This is great stuff- hooky, good riffs, stellar and meaty production and an undercurrent of dark atmosphere running throughout. The Viking themes run throughout the album- “Defenders of Midgard” is an obvious example. It gives us changes of tempo, unusual riffs and no small amount of trad metal influence. It would appear that this best sums Unleashed up; they are undoubtedly Swedish death metal, but of the old school variety- there is no re-route to sellout, just trad metal sensibilities combined with death metal styling and years of experience.

“Where Is Your God Now?” ramps up the pace and aggression and is much more extreme. The verses go for a thrashing tempo, though, with some melody here and there in the riffs. Again, Unleashed's assault is tempered by dynamics and song craft- it is not just mindless blasting. “The Bolt Thrower” features a chugging main riff and is a stand out track for me. How much of this is a reference to the band, I am not sure, I am fairly certain that Thor is a main influence for this one. A war between the gods of Asgard and Christ seems to be shaping up (about time!) thematically. Lovely solo and nice tempo shifts, too.

‘Let The Hammer Fly’ opens fast and furious and makes use of thrashing beats propelling riffing that could be doom paced at times- a neat trick. “Where Churches Once Burned” reinstates Mjölnir to its rightful place as the tide turns in the Norsemens' favour while the riffs and solos come thick and fast over some deathly thrashing. ‘Land of The Thousand Lakes’ pays geographical tribute while the title track rolls slow and low until a galloping riff takes hold for the solo. The leads, incidentally, are of great quality throughout and really bring light and shade to some tracks.

The record closes with ‘Welcome The Son Of Thor!’ Thrashing pace meets melodic and sinister riffing, bringing to mind the glory days of the Swedish death metal scene. It's straightforward, really: if you like Dismember, Entombed, Hypocrisy et al you will like Unleashed. It is such a shame it took me so long to catch up, but now that I have I plan to work through their back catalogue. Real Heathen death metal!

Words by: Richard Maw

‘Dawn of the Nine’ is available now

For more information:

Like: https://www.facebook.com/unleashed

Official: http://www.unleashed.se