Sanzu are Australian. They are a five piece from Perth. These are facts about Sanzu. “Heavy Over the Home” is their second release, following an EP from 2015. This is another fact about Sanzu. There are fifteen songs for your delectation and pleasure on this album. This is yet another fact about this release. You’ll have noticed that I am going fact heavy on the first paragraph of the review. This is because I’m going to be pretty heavy on the opinion from this point on. If you’re a big fan of modern, ultra-dense Gojira-esque music that has some sort of connection to death metal, this might be for you.
It isn’t for me.
I’ve been sat with this album for a couple of weeks now, and to be honest it’s been pretty hard going. My normal plan of attack when reviewing new records is to play it during the lengthy commute to and from work. That really failed as a plan here, because – and I’m sorry to have to say it – I found the music here really too boring to do that, and the urge to switch it off and play something else instead was too vast. It’s not that the musicianship is bad here. In particular, there’s some impressive drumming, and just occasionally, I would hear a guitar riff that sounded as if it had managed to drag itself from a Morbid Angel album. Other than that, it’s all buried under the weight of the mono-riff. You know the one I am talking about. The one that’s essentially that big, deep, bouncy bass line that chugs along, and smashes everything before it. That’s ok. I quite like to hear the mono-riff every now and then. What I don’t like to hear it fifteen times in succession, smothering everything in a film of wobbly, common-denominator, head-nodding tedium.
No, perhaps I’m being too harsh. There are some tracks where they manage to escape the template that they appear to have set for themselves, where things get a bit more interesting. The title track, “Heavy Over The Home”, for instance, has real moments of promise, marrying together some pretty savage death metal and conquering doom. Sadly, elsewhere, the band clicks back into the mono-riff groove. I’m not sure that the production does them any favours, tending heavily towards the bottom end and smashing the sense of dynamism that the band might have wanted to have achieved. I’m sure that there must be a market out there for people who loved the first couple of Soulfly albums, and wanted to hear what it might sound like played a bit more death metal, and if you’re one of those people, then you might be in seventh heaven. Personally, while it’s clear that there are some good ideas here and there, and that the musicians have the technical skills to produce interesting music, it’s just not well evidenced here.
Sorry gents – I’d happily listen to your next album, but it’d be better if there was a bit more variety, and a lot less reliance on the bouncy bass rhythm thing. As it is, it left me worse than annoyed; it left me bored.
(4/10 Chris Davison)
Leave a Reply