Yep this is Polish, no problem with that, we get plenty of music from there and there is no shortage of extreme metal hailing from the country. The band’s Facebook page tells us that they are influenced by the likes of Vader, Hate Eternal, Nile, Cannibal Corpse and their ilk, obviously all high pedigree bands in the death metal world and all signed to big labels. In Silent are not and are independent, not that we would hold that against them but if you are looking for the quality of the big hitters here you won’t be finding it and truth be told this is kinda bargain basement stuff. There is no way I would say it has anything like the brutality of the aforementioned bands either, simply chugging along in a repetitive and fairly unchallenging sense from beginning to end of its 30 minute running time. At first I thought we had a drum machine but nope it would appear the band are a quartet and have released an album in 2013 and 4 demos prior to that.
Everything written about them and all the track titles apart from opener Silent Blast and strangely the seventh number ‘Welcome’ are in their native language and so is the delivery of vocals. Metal is a universal language and that should not be a problem in the slightest but here it really is a hurdle that I simply cannot get across. The fact is they are delivered in a raw and guttural fashion but it is also very clean with the words being (certainly if you speak the lingo) very understandable. As I do not, I really do not have a clue what the band are going on about and only feel like I am engaging on this as an outsider looking in. Sure clues can be found, the cover art is intriguing and the album title translates to something about the Vistula River being inhabited by the dead. Other titles allude to Rotting Honey, Necrofuckers, The Devil’s Eyes and things being set on fire which I am sure is very interesting but I simply cannot tie all the composite pieces together and get anything resembling the whole story.
Musically it’s is pretty formulaic stuff, there’s not much in the way of sophistication and technicality here which is not necessarily a bad thing but it is hardly adventurous either. There’s a certain amount of emphasis on groove aspects but it all gets stale rather quickly and despite no doubt the band having conviction about what they are doing, after several listens it is still pretty much forgettable after finishing with nothing in particular sticking out. Although I’m kind of loath to say it but I reckon this, if it has a target audience, will be one for the native speakers and them alone. I just can’t imagine anyone else particularly getting enthusiastic about it.
(5/10 Pete Woods)
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