I took this album on for review as a challenge as I’d seen Germany’s WFAHM some years ago in Manchester supporting Dying Fetus and was impressed by their technical onslaught. Branded as mathcore by the press because they are hard to categorise I feel the tag means the band has been severely pigeon-holed resulting, I suspect, in extreme metallers passing them by, especially technical death metal fans.

This is WFAHM’s fourth album and it begins with a tranquil sequence of strings before shattering the fabric of your ear drums on “Vertigo” with a spiralling guitar assault of acrobatic proportions. The drum work by Paul Seidel is breathtakingly battering, his double kick rhythms are astonishing (visit sickdrummer.com and watch him play on “To The Villains” from this album). Added to this you get bombing bass work that is equivalent to being under a building that is being demolished by TNT. Comparing to other bands one could cite Suicide Silence for some of the intense breakdown riffing, Gojira for the progressive guitar work and Gorod for the myriad of guitar riffs. “H(a)unted” is a bass bombing assault before the tech driven firestorm riffing of “Terrifier”. The production afforded here has seen a lot of thought given to how the album will flow at high and low speed and how to focus the listener on each instrument when needed, and a damn fine job has been done too.

Nico’s vocals are intensely rabid, venomously screamed and roared with considerable ferocity. “Of Fear And Total Control” has a brutal death metal angle like Defeated Sanity and a randomised riff assault not too far off Converge’s methodology of head caving riffing mania. The aforementioned “To The Villains” has bulldozing tempo changing terror and also tangential riff shifts that materialise spontaneously. There are plenty of breakdown moments on this album which add deluging impact and crushing heaviness like they should do. “Krycek” is a sludge ridden beast with relentless bass creating a slow syrupy stampeding undercurrent within the song before returning to the blast fest structuring of “Scopophobia” (which means a morbid fear of being stared at). The grinding blasting fury is packed with technical terror as even the clean vocals are weirdly insane. As WFAHM’s offensive comes to a close with the string laden “Epiphany” a couple of bonus tracks are bolted on the end beginning with a cover of the Will Haven song “Dolph Lundgren” and a demo version of “To The Villains” which is a little rawer than the album version but not much.

(8/10 Martin Harris)

 http://www.wfahm.com