Wage War - Stigma (Fearless Records)
On their fifth album, Florida band Wage War boost not only their heavy riffs but also their pop credibility. With modern radio metal at their core, they have grooves and distorted riffs which will get the crowds moving, alongside this though they have hooks that would catch Moby Dick.
With the massive choruses on Magnetic and Blur, Cody Quistad's clean vocals are used brilliantly, though Briton Bond's hard hitting screams lead a track such as Tombstone where aggression is key. Infecting these metal tunes is a load of EDM/synthwave pulses, adding a dancey bottom end on Happy Hunting as Hellbent brings back the grit and angst.
In My Blood is built on Stephen Kluesener's drumming, as melodies return for Is This How It Ends? The leads of Seth Blake on top of the crunchy riffs from Quistad and bassist Chris Gaylord's for Nail5. Wage War want to keep you moving, playing earworms that even hardened metal heads will be humming for days. 7/10
Split Iris - Bloodred Dusk (Seek And Strike)
Split Iris are a djent band, no doubt about it, perhaps djent is a dirty word now and ‘modern metal’ is more the in thing but these Finns play djent, adding a dash of deathcore brutality to the palm muted breakdowns and metalcore loud/soft dynamics. Formed during the pandemic they quickly set about recording, Bloodred Dusk being their newest full length.
Based around the concept of “humanity and its looming end” it leans on aspects of hubris, from losing all hope to finding bright moments in the darkest days. The concept is driven by the emotive performances of the band on this record, especially in the duality of the vocals, shifting from screams to clean singing, there’s clarity and emotion in both as the songs such as No Fear showcase. The Veil has that stop start chunky riffage of a band like Monuments, the screams and growls fading into haunting cleans.
The cinematic elements of the concept album are brought forth on Oath where there's a sweeping atmospheres with synths in the background the clean vocals soaring as the title track calls out to the more aggressive styles or djent with the longest run time of the album bringing all of the elements together, that breaks down into dissonance at the end leading into the ambient Flood which ends the album proper.
Bloodred Dusk is a djent record that sticks to the spirit of the genres beginnings. 7/10
Adelon – Resurgence (Self Released)
Swiss tech death band Adelon who cite Decapitated, Gojira, Obscura and Beyond Creation as influences, you could also add Rivers Of Nihil too due to the use of saxophone on Fleshless Vertebrae. Any way you slice it, Adelon have ‘a sound’ as they use a lot of programmed drums and keys/synths to create atmospheres behind their technical guitar playing, it’s that sci-fi/extra-terrestrial style of approach that many tech death bands use these days, adding effects to the vocals to make them sound like robot on the opener as the cinematic flourishes join the gaps between outright blasting.
Adelon are quite a young band but you can hear their inspirations the addition of Alex Sedin, owner of Ghostalgy Prods as a sound engineer helping them to fulfil their ideas as engineer/co-producer as well as mixing and mastering. He makes this record sound as professional as it does, though the band are all very talented with two of them handling multiple instruments though the idea that they have a drum programmer and not a drummer is a little alien to me. This aside Resurgence showcases a band with a lot of ability, however if they’re looking to perform I think a real drummer would really help their sound feel a bit more natural. 7/10
Spawned From Hate – Elective Amputation (Brutal Mind)
West Midlands based brutal death metal band Spawned From Hate have finally released their debut full length and the trio have had a little help on this one. Formed in 2012 and consisting of David Hudson (bass), Ewan Gibb (guitar) and Daniel Phipps (vocals) they like so many other bands used technology to fill in the drum parts of previous releases but with Elective Amputation they looked for a real life drummer to blast away behind their extremely brutal style of death metal.
They hired Italian drummer Giulio Galati who is known as the powerhouse behind Hideous Divinity and due to his blistering performance, the guitars and bass were tweaked to match it. It means that Spawned From Hate have spent a lot of time to make this album as brutal and technical as they can. From the opening moments it’s a relentless battery of thick syrupy chugging, full bore blasting and technical shifts in pace.
They say they are inspired by the likes of Suffocation, Deeds Of Flesh and Inveracity and they certainly achieve a similar kind of mechanical aggression as those bands with tracks such as Butcher My Master, Bane Consumption and PDU. The guitar playing ferocious as the bass cuts in with flickers of virtuosity and yes of course the real drumming makes a difference for me though, it’s the vocals as there’s a lot of technique in these bowel shredding roars, the use of some disgusting vocal fry on Supreme Being is impressive.
Whether you like Elective Amputation is totally dependent on whether you like brutal death metal, if you do there’s lots to like, if not then it won’t win you over. 7/10
With the massive choruses on Magnetic and Blur, Cody Quistad's clean vocals are used brilliantly, though Briton Bond's hard hitting screams lead a track such as Tombstone where aggression is key. Infecting these metal tunes is a load of EDM/synthwave pulses, adding a dancey bottom end on Happy Hunting as Hellbent brings back the grit and angst.
In My Blood is built on Stephen Kluesener's drumming, as melodies return for Is This How It Ends? The leads of Seth Blake on top of the crunchy riffs from Quistad and bassist Chris Gaylord's for Nail5. Wage War want to keep you moving, playing earworms that even hardened metal heads will be humming for days. 7/10
Split Iris - Bloodred Dusk (Seek And Strike)
Split Iris are a djent band, no doubt about it, perhaps djent is a dirty word now and ‘modern metal’ is more the in thing but these Finns play djent, adding a dash of deathcore brutality to the palm muted breakdowns and metalcore loud/soft dynamics. Formed during the pandemic they quickly set about recording, Bloodred Dusk being their newest full length.
Based around the concept of “humanity and its looming end” it leans on aspects of hubris, from losing all hope to finding bright moments in the darkest days. The concept is driven by the emotive performances of the band on this record, especially in the duality of the vocals, shifting from screams to clean singing, there’s clarity and emotion in both as the songs such as No Fear showcase. The Veil has that stop start chunky riffage of a band like Monuments, the screams and growls fading into haunting cleans.
The cinematic elements of the concept album are brought forth on Oath where there's a sweeping atmospheres with synths in the background the clean vocals soaring as the title track calls out to the more aggressive styles or djent with the longest run time of the album bringing all of the elements together, that breaks down into dissonance at the end leading into the ambient Flood which ends the album proper.
Bloodred Dusk is a djent record that sticks to the spirit of the genres beginnings. 7/10
Adelon – Resurgence (Self Released)
Swiss tech death band Adelon who cite Decapitated, Gojira, Obscura and Beyond Creation as influences, you could also add Rivers Of Nihil too due to the use of saxophone on Fleshless Vertebrae. Any way you slice it, Adelon have ‘a sound’ as they use a lot of programmed drums and keys/synths to create atmospheres behind their technical guitar playing, it’s that sci-fi/extra-terrestrial style of approach that many tech death bands use these days, adding effects to the vocals to make them sound like robot on the opener as the cinematic flourishes join the gaps between outright blasting.
Adelon are quite a young band but you can hear their inspirations the addition of Alex Sedin, owner of Ghostalgy Prods as a sound engineer helping them to fulfil their ideas as engineer/co-producer as well as mixing and mastering. He makes this record sound as professional as it does, though the band are all very talented with two of them handling multiple instruments though the idea that they have a drum programmer and not a drummer is a little alien to me. This aside Resurgence showcases a band with a lot of ability, however if they’re looking to perform I think a real drummer would really help their sound feel a bit more natural. 7/10
Spawned From Hate – Elective Amputation (Brutal Mind)
West Midlands based brutal death metal band Spawned From Hate have finally released their debut full length and the trio have had a little help on this one. Formed in 2012 and consisting of David Hudson (bass), Ewan Gibb (guitar) and Daniel Phipps (vocals) they like so many other bands used technology to fill in the drum parts of previous releases but with Elective Amputation they looked for a real life drummer to blast away behind their extremely brutal style of death metal.
They hired Italian drummer Giulio Galati who is known as the powerhouse behind Hideous Divinity and due to his blistering performance, the guitars and bass were tweaked to match it. It means that Spawned From Hate have spent a lot of time to make this album as brutal and technical as they can. From the opening moments it’s a relentless battery of thick syrupy chugging, full bore blasting and technical shifts in pace.
They say they are inspired by the likes of Suffocation, Deeds Of Flesh and Inveracity and they certainly achieve a similar kind of mechanical aggression as those bands with tracks such as Butcher My Master, Bane Consumption and PDU. The guitar playing ferocious as the bass cuts in with flickers of virtuosity and yes of course the real drumming makes a difference for me though, it’s the vocals as there’s a lot of technique in these bowel shredding roars, the use of some disgusting vocal fry on Supreme Being is impressive.
Whether you like Elective Amputation is totally dependent on whether you like brutal death metal, if you do there’s lots to like, if not then it won’t win you over. 7/10
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