Vicious Pummeling death/thrash
Terrorama's third
album is yet another half hour of vicious death/thrash played by
veteran musicians. Peter Lidén, the owner of I Hate Records, plays
something not very common on his label here but there's something
familiar here : the old school feel. Similar to Hypnosia,
Vulcano or Sarcofago, the band delivers a slab of vitriolic burning
metal that will please the aficionados of pummeling classic onyx.
Genocide is a brief
attack on all your senses and it's a fun ride, well fun is relative
since the subjects are quite gritty and as a future history teacher,
I'm pretty happy to read about other historic matters than World War
II. Politically conscious, the band writes about the violent excesses
of humanity as illustrated by the gruesome painted cover art. There's
tracks about the Soviet era and even Uganda. You guessed it, it's all
about famous genocides like the Holodomor (the last epic track) is
literally “extermination by hunger” in Ukrainian is about the
Stalinian purges in the 1930s and I fucking loved that era. History
is a very dark subject and when the lyrics are well written, it's
always fantastic. So kudos to the lyricist(s), great job and it's a
change from the usual dark, evil or satanic subjects.
Even the longer
tracks like “Conceived in Abhorrence” are machines of destruction
fueled with the rage of early Kreator or Nifelheim's seminal debut.
Armed with fast riffs with the right amount of rawness, the guitars
are screechy and high. The production, capable, is right what the
band needed, metal shouldn't be too clean and sterile anyway. Even
though the band managed to mix death and thrash metal in their
formula, there's some black metal here and there mostly in the
tremolo riffs and the dark cavernous vocals such as the epic six
minutes mid paced conclusion. There's also thrashier songs like the
title track evoking Show No Mercy. It relies more on the early days
of thrash or the proto black bands than on the more melodic side of
this nowadays stale genre. The band acts as a good death metal
counterpart to Norway's Aura Noir, both evolving in the modern scene
with livid old school influences but also enough punch in their
songwriting to keep things interesting.
Four years after
Omnipotence, the band hasn't lost its power. It's fast, heavy and has
this raw savage sound. Nonetheless, it's nothing extraordinary and
while I played it often because it's easy to listen to, I'm afraid it
won't quite pass the test of time. Definitely not mediocre but a bit
mundane and I think it's for the purists of the genre, a good add for
most metal veterans anyhow.
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