### Black Breath: Heavy breathing

#### 04/08/10 || Habakuk

I don’t understand my local, well, let’s call it Best Buy for convenience. You know, major consumer electronics store. Their small metal department holds nothing but a crippled framework of what constitutes the genre, with a strong tendency towards Hard Rock. They’ve got Skid Row, they’ve had a copy of the recent Fair Warning album laying around for ages, and an extra section for “Middle Ages Rock” shit. Die. Sometimes when I’m around I stroll through it nevertheless, just to make myself a little angrier than before.

Why I don’t understand them is because sometimes, they just have the odd copy of totally different (you know, good) stuff in stock. So, when I went through their stuff last week, I found this one copy of Black Breath: Heavy breathing. Surprised I was, intrigued. I had read about this band, I believe, on the GD forums, and had checked them out on MySpace. So, without further ado, I bought this album at a ridiculously expensive price. Why? Because what I remembered was an awesome mix of Entombed style Swedish death guitars, crust, a bit of thrash and even some chocolate topping. Damn was I disappointed.

No chocolate.

It sounded pretty fucken fine though. And by the time track four hit me, my craving for choco-bliss was replaced by a fucken VIRUUUUS!!! That’s right, VIRUUUUS!!!, which didn’t leave my head anymore for a few days. VIRUUUUS!!!

And it’s still there, thank the elephant in my family tree. What exactly am I talking about, you might ask, and my answer is that I’m talking about the chorus to said track. This album is full of those fucken awesome song title choruses, and it’s pretty damn catchy as a whole. It reminds me a bit of Death Breath, just better – not only due to the similar monikers (hey, there’s only so few Repulsion songs), but also the general musical and lyrical approach taken by these five Americans. The guitars sound decidedly Swedish, the riffs are simplistic, the drumming is simple, old school and d-beaty with a good dose of snare fun, and the lyrics revel in horror of the cheesy kind as well as tongue-in-cheek awesomeness:

The elders have fallen Crippled by time A black dawn is rising I said hey

Oh yeah, fuzzy, audible bass and a franticly shouting frontman complete the picture. “BLACKNEEESS! Children of the HORN!!”, “VIRUUUUS!!!” and so forth. And the production courtesy of Kurt Ballou (Converge) is fucken ace – It’s gritty yet balanced, punchy yet relatively clear. Perfect for a band like this.

The songwriting is mainly full-on high speed numbers interspersed with catchy half-time sections, but you’ll find the occasional “creepy” 70s horror movie melody or a few slower, chugging grooves (“Unholy Virgin”). However, in my opinion the band is best when they keep the pedal to the metal. Which is like, almost all the time. Good work. The only reason why this doesn’t get a higher score is that the songs, albeit catchy, blur together a bit and except for a few “VIRUUUS” moments, I couldn’t cite much else from – my, mind you, pachydermal – memory.

Fair enough, that’s the downside of their approach and I’m cool with that. This album is still a lot of fun and well worth your money if you’re into crust punk-fueled death metal of ye olde school. However, why the band chose the shitty cover photo over the psychedelic horror artwork in the folder remains a mystery.

- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Southern Lord
- Website: Black Breath MySpace
- Band
- N.T. McAdams: vocals
- Eric Wallace: guitars
- Zack Muljat: guitars
- Elijah Nelson: bass
- Jamie Byrum: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Black sin (spit on the cross)
- 02. Eat the witch
- 03. Escape from death
- 04. I am beyond
- 05. Virus
- 06. Heavy breathing
- 07. Children of the horn
- 08. Fallen
- 09. Unholy virgin
- 10. Wewhocannotbenamed