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Horrendous: The chills

28/02/12 || SwornToTheBlack

A debut death metal album released in 2012 from a band that claims to have an obsession with the old-school ways should raise several suspicious brows from the genre’s elitists, but let those brows unfurrow, because Horrendous is a blast from the past. Additionally, the band manage to avoid the obvious pitfall of their name and not suck horrendously.

The scary carnival leads of the opening track; the slower, pre-Gothenburg melodies of the later parts of the album; the discreet portions of thrash and heavy metal influence — this really sounds like the kind of music the kids these days could get into. Then you recall that they already did — over twenty years ago — when Pestilence, Obituary, and Death brought this brand of brutal to the forefront.

Horrendous is a band that wears its influences on its cut-off denim jacket sleeves. The vocals are strikingly reminiscient of Pestilence, and the ghost of Chuck Schuldiner seems to haunt much of the songwriting. Fortunately, “The chills” never comes across as more than derivative, as opposed to being a complete rip-off.

Apparently, long after Chuck got busy reinventing progressive heavy music, New Yorkers and the Swedish took the genre in new directions, and Dave Vincent decided he liked tight leather more than great music, a few musicians in the eastern United States decided enough wasn’t enough and formed Horrendous. Luckily for us, they did a pretty good job and actually managed to produce and album that lives up to the standards of its forefathers.

For the most part, it’s exactly what you’d expect if you’ve read this far into the review. The riffs are “ripping” and catchy, with just enough groove to keep things rolling and just enough distinct melody to be emotionally gripping yet unquestionably sinister. The lyrics are better than what has become the typical death metal horror movie garbage, though not ground-breaking as far as I can tell. The album even abides by the unwritten law that every old-school death album have a cheesy synth-driven instrumental track (“Sleep sickness”).

Perhaps the most interesting anachronism about the album is in the production. In its pursuit of the old-school sound, there is heavy reverb on the vocals, snare drum, and lead guitar tracks. This, however, is something of a contradiction to the dry, saturated, rhythm guitars and well-engineered drum tracks. Though the effect is extremely subtle, it is essentially the only thing providing distance between this recording and the dark, rumbling tone of the classic-era albums and their plethora of mix aberrations.

The single biggest shortcoming for the album may not have anything to do with the music itself, but rather its timeliness. The process of reviewing this material led to numerous engagements with the original recordings that inspired it — their legacies well-established. If “The chills” had been released in the heyday of classic death metal, this article may have been written for the Class6(66) section along with the other greats of the time. As it stands, “The chills” is a solid effort in a tired subgenre with little room for expansion. This one goes down as a moral victory.

Information
Released: 2012
Label: Dark Descent Records
Website: Horrendous MySpace
Band
Matt Knox: guitars, vocals
Damian Herring: guitars, vocals
Jamie Knox: drums

Tracklist
01. The womb
02. Ripped to shreds
03. Altars
04. The somber (desolate winds)
05. Fleshrot
06. The ritual
07. Fatal dreams
08. Sleep sickness
09. The eye of madness

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