Now on their 9th album including this their second release of the year it seems like there is no stopping Hungarian’s Ektomorf.
A mellow little build up gets things going for “War Is My Way”, it has a heavy bit but then mellows out again with clean vocals, sounding a bit Machine Headish truth be told.While certainly not Pantera, “Unscarred” is more trademark stuff.”The Cross” powers itself along with some heavy and catchy guitar riffs combined with very angry vocals and a beat that is sure to get a crowd bouncing.Starting out very laid back but never building up too much, “Cut It Out” has a nice rapidly changing guitar riff.
The title track “Black Flag” has Zoltán Farkas shouting over his and Tamás Schrottner’s strong chuggy guitar rhythm backed by a tribal drum beat.”Private Hell” is more mid-tempo with a steady snare tattoo which Zoltán sings slowly over allowing him to put more emotion than just anger into his voice.”12 Angels” is a pleasant acoustic guitar interlude followed by the much heavier and angrier “Enemy” with its almost spoken verses and shouted choruses over the very bouncy rhythm of the down tuned guitars. An almost immediate drum attack on “Fuck Your God” snaps at your ears with as much force as Robert Jaksa must be pounding on his snare.The bends, squawks and squeals on “Never Surrender” are very reminiscent of the late 90’s, as is the choppy and headbobbyingly infectious rhythm.If it’s possible to whisper shouted vocals, then Zoltán manages it on “Sick Love” for the verses, but does his regular gruff vocal on the choruses.
Szabolcs Murvai’s bass rumble on “Feel Like This” would probably rattle windows, if I wasn’t listening to this on headphones, The intro to “Kill It” comes from the trial of John Gardner for the murder of Chelsea King and Amber Dubois with the song pretty much being a description of his activities.I really wasn’t expecting this to be a cover version of the Foo Fighters’ “The Pretender”, but it is, and it’s not bad at all. It’s a lot rougher than the original, vocally that is, musically it sounds pretty much on par.Sadly they have their formula and haven’t varied from it much, but then I guess the acoustic album they released earlier this year makes up for it, so with that in mind, there’s no new ground covered here, but as it’s what works for them, why change.
(6/10 Marco Gaminara)
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