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Spazmosity: Welcome death
28/04/10 || Altmer
Oh goody; black metal. My favourite. In all seriousness, I’m glad I get to review a black/death metal band again – after all that bad stuff we get sent to review, this thing sounds like the fucking Wiener Philharmonic next to it! It’s not of any particular interest, but it’s got some good things going for it, which means it’s automatically better than most of the shit that is presented to us on a silver platter, just to be thrown to the lions like Christians.
This album here is an attempt at a ferocious platter, consisting of almost equal parts black and death, but for my money the black metal is the side that dominates. I have to admit I rather like that – it’s not silly and satanic like actual black metal, and there is proper groove present, but there’s enough of that speed and aggro to make me bang my head without there being a need for technical wankery or “brutality”. Sometimes there’s some more melodic high-pitched riffery going on, which gives us a nice break from the blastbeating and double bass drumming low frequency bonanza that pervades the rest of the album. None of it is particularly fast though, and the album often seems a bit bogged down in mid-tempo metal, but lacking the required groove for me to bounce around my room like a possessed rabbit.
We also have a bit van Drunen-esque vocals, hoarse but evil, which suit the music, especially when it slows down as on for example “March of death”. The production is rather thin for the guitars, which detracts a bit from the punch. I don’t hugely like the slightly clicky kick drum sound either. Meh. It’s not anything too bad, but blergh, it doesn’t make me like the sound anymore. All in all it sounds so average. That is my biggest complaint here: everything sounds so mediocre, so half-done. It’s probably because there are quite a few slower, doomy sections (with the occasional cool solo over it as on “The Art of War”), but there is too much of them as opposed to the desired amount. I get extremely bored when they decide to slow down for no reason at all. There’s just nothing going on here then. Yawn.
Even though I’ve heard worse, way worse, and there are some nice flirts with black metal a la Marduk, or the occasional riff that sounds like Morbid Angel, and then you’re like “yeah, this sounds cool”, but it is not interesting apart from that. There’s no reason to put this on, and even though they do their blackened death soup all fine, it’s a disc I won’t be coming back to. There’s just nothing here that you haven’t already heard elsewhere done better. I heard Ola of Grave is now in this band, I hope he injects some much needed energy into the next album cos this isn’t doing anything for me. After listening to this, I am one bored review-monkey.
I was originally going to give these guys a 6 (musically it definitely deserves that), but thanks to the not-so-fantastic production and tempo I’m gonna have to bump this down to a:
- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Khaosmaster Productions
- Website: www.spazmosity.com
- Band
- Emanuelsson: vocals
- Mordström: bass
- Thelberg: guitars
- Lamming: guitars
- Dimman: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Regicide
- 02. Iron Coffin
- 03. Prelude
- 04. Forged by Steel
- 05. March of Death
- 06. 13 Miller’s Court (Sweet Mary dreaming)
- 07. The Ancient Art
- 08. The Infernal Dynasty
- 09. Panopticon
