### Instinct Of Survival: North of nowhere

#### 21/04/11 || Habakuk

We all know how good old Bolt Thrower is. Well, not everyone, but you who don’t aren’t included in the “we” anyway. So, we all know how all this new shit can’t possibly replicate what happened in the 80s, when some guys and a gal dug Antisect, Crass and Discharge so much they set out to evolve that base into some of the most primeval death metal ever. Let’s all think again, shall we?

The reason is Instinct of Survival from northern Germany. They found it. The box with the buzzing, chugging, wooly guitars. A pile of Open E-riffs among which the odd killer riff is buried. Borderline sloppy drums. Dissonant progressions. That kind of hammer-on lead guitars. No shit, I’ve never heard a band this close to the sound on “In Battle There Is No Law” or “Realm of Chaos”. Let alone a band who released their album in question in 2009. And it doesn’t even have blast beats. You’d think those folks reaching adolescence post-1980 (who probably never even tape-traded!) got so spoiled by Nirvana and the Internet that they couldn’t possibly conjure that ugly, nasty spirit again. Well, wrong.

I guess the secret lies in the fact that the guys in this band apparently aren’t really metalheads. And they don’t try to copy Bolt Thrower. If metalheads do that, they become Amon Amarth and that’s shit, quite plainly. Instinct of Survival however started off as a flat-out punk band, and that still shows in “North of nowhere” (their debut after 9 years of existence) being filthy, basic and far from pompous. Instead of just taking the war theme and the crushing wall of sound, these guys went for Bolt Thrower’s roots – it’s probably not a coincidence that the cover zombie is wearing a Deviated Instinct shirt. Still, with song lengths around 4 minutes on average, this is hardly a punk album. The only thing that strongly suggests this is one of the singers – but have you heard Karl Willets on the Peel Sessions ’88? Sounded like a punk shouter, too. And we all know where that ended. So yeah, give it a good two decades and we might have another “Those once loyal” on our hands. In the meantime you’ll find me in a corner banging my head moronically to “North of nowhere’s” title track.

The only low points on this album are a pointless interlude, the fact that it takes a song or two to get used to that singer and maybe some five minutes that could have been cut off. The rest is highly recommended for everyone whose string of saliva has been growing since reading those two album titles in paragraph two.

- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Underground Movement
- Website: Instinct Of Survival MySpace
- Band
- Padde: guitars, vocals
- Kalle: guitars, vocals
- Pacik: bass
- Hauke: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Intro – human?
- 02. Suffocation
- 03. Old lonely embittered
- 04. Lifeless bodies
- 05. North of nowhere
- 06. Pain
- 07. Broken
- 08. Retaliation
- 09. Not welcome