Candlelight continue their broad genre ranging signings, this time with a blizzard from Oz with links to Blood Duster amongst others so I guessed we weren’t going to be talking gothic metal. Nope, with a charmingly impossible cover, this is death/grind/hardcore kind of jumble; deaththrash riffs, hardcore vocals, eleven tracks, less than half an hour of your life. Can’t be bad, right?
Well it certainly means business. These are tightly gripped iron bars hammered across the shins in the form of music. Sound wise you get the kind off muscle bound death metal that hid inside the thrash of One Man Army but with a heavy bend towards the staccato grind with something about the vocals that reminds me of Denial Fiend without the humour (though looking at song titles like Silly Ol’ Mate, Shit On The Liver and the closing weirdness of Sandy it’s certainly there.)
I think the problem I have with this album though is that, competent as it may be, the more I listen the less I’m engaged I’m afraid. The title track is a nice malignant hardcore stomp and Dead End finally breaks into a great metal punk rolling riff but the remainder whilst never being remotely bad just kind of rolls out the deaththrash or the deathgrind riffs, pummels us for a minute or two and moves to the next. It’s the kind of album that oddly convinces you that live shows might be a glorious, shifting chaotic scene with great oddball characters but shorn of the visuals too much of this blurs into songs that simply come and go. When they get it right like on Dead End and Bite Your Head Off they have personality as well as power and grind, but too often, like on Silly Ol’ Mate, it starts furiously and fine but drops into grind by numbers. It feels like someone pulling a blanket over the undoubted personality just as it gets going.
It’s a shame because the vocals are fine and full off character, the production is OK (if maybe a little precise) and the band come over as well versed in this stuff. Grind fans with a taste for death metal should check them out as nothing is awful here and there is clearly something busting to get out but, frankly, after the reviewing is over I can’t see much dragging me back to this.
Sorry, I pass.
(5/10 Gizmo)
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