It’s been a couple years since I reviewed Ektomorf and it would appear that I missed the album they released last year, but never mind, this more than makes up my dose of Hungarian metal. Well… I say Hungarian metal, but truth be told, their music still bears a healthy dose of tribal Roma rhythms and plenty of anger.
The 45 second “Intro” harks to the opening desert scene of Middle Eastern flavour, but “I” quickly stomps that underfoot with plenty of aggressive guitars and far more venom in Zoltán Farkas’s vocals.
Title track “Aggressor” has Zoltán Farkas and Tomi Schrottner’s guitars immediately kick in at a frenetic pace causing Robert Jaksa to pound the living hell out of his drums just to be heard. However on “Holocaust” it’s more the down tuned, groove metal of old with Szabolcs Murvai’s driving bass holding it all together.
“Move On” is pure Soulfly with its buzzing guitars and choppy, bouncy rhythm and very Cavaleraesque screams.
Now the duet “Evil By Nature” featuring George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher on vocals works rather well as his vocals are far deeper than Zoltán’s with a completely different style of growl.
It’s on “You Can’t Get More” where you figure that swearing for the sake of swearing can actually detract from the emphasis a well-placed curse word can deliver and completely dilute the effect they may have been after,.
For some reason I keep thinking of Tears for Fears when listening to “Emotionless World”, but it’s not a cover and actually sounds nothing like ’em, but I guess it’s the swaying groove of the chorus that must ping a chord for me somehow.
“Eastside” has a great acoustic intro before the electric guitars and manic drums blast away for the majority of the song with an interesting bridge towards the end.
A slow but powerful guitar riff is punctuated by the cadence of the vocals and drums on “Scars” where anguish appears to be the main emotion portrayed, while on “Damned Nation” comes across more as hurt in most of the screaming.
“You Lost” is a bit of a spoken/rap/rant which a chuggy guitar, thankfully it’s rather short.
The rather up-tempo “You’re Not For Me” is definitely the bounciest track on the album while “Memento” is a beautifully tranquil piece with a gentle lead and an Arabian flair allowing the album to end on a rather unaggressive if not heartfelt note.
While sadly they don’t do anything terribly new, they do stick to what they do well and deliver on that count.
(6/10 – Marco Gaminara)
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