Reviews: Avulsed, Spiders, Triggertone, 30,00 Monkies (Will Bond, Matt Bladen, Jordan Griffiths & Mateusz Stefanow)

Avulsed - Nordic Embryogenesis (Xtreem Music) [Will Bond]

Spanish death metal merchants Avulsed have served up their new album Nordic Embryogenesis. A pummelling collection of eleven tracks stacked to the brim with punching riffs, deep gutturals and schizophrenic tempo changes. This is old school death metal for old school death metallers.

The opener, Expunging Mortalities (Funebre), has a slow pounding energy, peppered with blast beats, like a Lovecraftian monster awakening from an aeons long slumber. The first dive bombs appear on No Canonization (Carbonized), with breaks in the guitars revealing a beautiful bass tone. Which brings me to the production, it is raw but clear, not over produced but with enough finesse to let each instrument breathe. 

 The ride bell cuts through the high end like a scalpel, while the low end guitars are each giving their space in the mix. The vocals are punctuated with wide panning on longer growls which gives those moments even more depth.

Heroes In Godly Blaze (Adramelech) is a real headbanger with high register riffs and a brutal breakdown, the tempo stays constant, letting the drummer dictate the groove. Spawn Of Flesh (Macabre End) sounds like a monster emerging from the mud, then moves to an almost hardcore two step, this would definitely be the circle pit track. A synth led guitar solo erupts before the monster returns to the mire.

Recantetion Of The Forsaken (Abhoth) opens like a resurrected corpse lurching forward before gathering pace and going into a frenzied guitar solo with perfectly interspersed dual parts. Female Sabbath (Phlegethon) is a speeding flesh ripper, with a drum break that reveals the beauty of the drum production.

The final track Pestilential Mists (Abhorrence) has the feel of an album closer. It leaves more breathing room than the main body of the record, a funereal dirge as the album slopes off into a blackened sunset.

Nordic Embryogenesis feels well bookended by the opening and closing tracks, it is a well ordered record when listened to in full. The production feels alive, letting the rawness of the performances shine. It is death metal played to the limit, feeling like the wheels might come off, but always keeping the beast rolling. 8/10

Spiders - Crystal Eyes (Wild Kingdom) [Matt Bladen]

Swedish rock n rollers Spiders have been listening to a lot of Blondie records while writing Crystal Eyes, vocalist Ann-Sofie Hoyles has studied the phrasing and delivery of Ms Harry and brought a lot of it into their fourth studio record with tracks like the title track, Crystal Eyes. Continuing their sonic evolution, as the band called it their most "collaborative yet".

It's high energy rock with some punk grit, glammy new wave swagger and some garage sleaze that's also very reminiscent of their recent touring partners The Hellacopters even releasing a split with them, the garage punk rock style beating at the heart of what Spiders do as a band, riffs pulled from The Stones and The Stooges (Heart Of Stone), through influences of many of their fellow Swedes.

So Spiders languish in retroism, but are never consumed by it totally, Flying To High for instance could be off a Cheap Trick record while (Doomed To A) Life Of Misery brings balladry with duet that has some lush Phil Spector production values, while Playing With Fire is a guitar masterclass and Loser and A Little Too Late draws from Badfinger.

Spiders mature with their new album, coming from garage rock into a much more rounded sound on Crystal Eyes. 8/10

Triggertone - Bombs Away EP (Self Released) [Jordan Griffiths]

For those of you who are as new to Triggertone as I am, they are an alternative and heavy rock three-piece band from Belfast, and here we have their newest E.P., Bombs Away.

This 4 track EP comes in really strong with Pray, it has strong and meaningful vocals, and also sections of just pure instrumental. The guitar tone, instead of being overly technical, it’s deep, its heavy, it speaks to you and adds onto the underlying meaning of the overall track, the vocals, they’re atmospheric, they’re weathered, serious, and somewhat uneasy for the most part, they tell a story, and they set the stage for it really really well.

The second track, Room 1046, a deliberately mysterious title, and the track lives up to it, making you feel things such as isolation, confinement, and sometimes even claustrophobia, which really pulls you further into the story that this EP invites you into.

Now, we have The Fade, the longest track on the EP, and it comes at you a lot softer than the previous songs, building its atmosphere as we go forward. The vocals are also a massive part of this, getting increasingly more strained as the song progresses. It has an aura of sadness about this song, despite the gradual increase in heaviness, the underlying tone remains. They include a truly beautiful guitar solo towards the 4:05 mark, that brings this track to its climax beautifully.

Ending it off, we have the title track, Bombs Away, which combines the heavy riffs of the guitars and vocals, with the melodic side of the E.P. in a truly worthy ending track of what is already such a great E.P. The more you listen, and reflect on what they have produced here, the more you understand the passion and time that was put into this.

Overall, this E.P. serves as an excellent entry into the discography of Triggertone, and I for one will be adding them onto my musical rotation! 9/10

30,000 Monkies – Super Rebound (Fvn Kult Rekords) [Mateusz Stefanow]

Before I even started my first listen of this album, I had to sit and almost analyse the cover because it is oddly fascinating. Capturing both motion and stillness, a feeling of simultaneous vertigo of falling and elation of rising into the air; it’s curiously mundane yet liminal and difficult to pinpoint what is, for lack of a better term, off about it. This feeling is doubled down upon within the actual songs.

The Gums and Mountainesque 4 have quiet, repetitive segments which are discordant to the pounding sections that border them, ideally matching that curious cover art, the stationary repetition and gentle flow of these sections matches the shadow on the cover, whereas the more pulse-raising drumming and growling vocals are as that car- unsteady and unpredictable in the right way.

Prism Break then brings in groove metal influences, with more prominent basslines, and a dense sludge-like sound that gives the sensation of diving headfirst into liquid concrete, an abrasive drone that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

[Horns Wailing], [Siren Singing] are as they say on their respective tins, bringing to mind Negativland’s seminal classic Escape From Noise - initially unpredictable breaks from the previous tracks.

Unsound Hero may be the most experimental song on the album, with clean vocals over jaunty plucked strings invoking a feeling of warped nostalgia, descending into a sludgy mire of distortion, returning to the plucked strings we hear screaming and static crackling in and the sludge elements return once again- Unsound indeed.

By the time the album reaches [Bells Ringing, Tale Meeting] we are welcomed by gentle, you guessed it, bells ringing. Before long, the sound starts warping, the chimes are drowned out by the chunky distorted bass, screams and even louder riffs.

Initially I had very mixed feelings about this album, but my second listen I began to appreciate the Cronenbergian soundscape being laid out before me, and the seemingly jagged, disjointed sections didn’t seem so disjointed after all, so if you don’t like this on your first listen, please give it another try! 9/10