I last caught up with these guys three years or so ago when they were still called Elitist and released the album ‘Fear In A Handful Of Dust’, a crust filled noisy and chaotic affair with a good nod towards death metal. So here we all are three years later and what else has changed with the name? Well as ‘Bloated City’ bursts out at you, initially you have to say they’ve gone full tilt for the thrashy end of death metal. It’s fast and it is most certainly furious, blasting out with iron hard riffs but, as highlighted even more on follow up ‘Old Father’, there is still that chaotic punk-edged feel to the way the riffs hurtle round the musical bends before slamming into the metal. This lends Bastard Feast a rare energy, the speed of a death thrash machine but with all the loose fury of hardcore punk which is all good. Nothing worse to these ears than overly sanitised and technical death. They can slow things down too, as on ‘The Serpent Spoke’ and closer ‘Synthetic Messiah’, so they know what brakes are for even if they are mostly used to avoid jumping the rails on the bends.
Yep actually everything is here on Osculum Infame (that’s something about kissing arses of devil’s to the non-Latin speakers among us, another indication with the song titles that things have taken a more death metal turn). The vocals whip up a black metal storm with snaps, howls and growls in commendable variation with some serious blast and battery from the drumming; the riffs pile on attack after attack, still thankfully unable to totally leave the free-wheeling punk roots behind (check out ‘Claustrophobic To This World’ for a fine bit of punk/grind riff and howl) but clenching hard too and with unsettling, discordant lead breaks on top and a good bass underpinning it all. They can even do atmosphere as on the dark and rather eerie sludgy sections on songs like the aforementioned ‘Claustrophobic… ‘. Frankly my only reservation here is that although the noise is rather fine not that many hooks draw me in overall but it’s still a rather good album, y’know. It just digs its teeth in and carries on savaging.
It’s a shame for me but probably not the case for others as I sincerely doubt you’ll hear a more convincing of committed bit of blackened crusty deathpunk in 2014. Heavy and straightforward as a coal truck rattling over your foot, Bastard Feast do have a lot on offer. What they lacked for me I’m sure they will make up for with others and certainly should be checked out.
(7/10 Gizmo)
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