Originally independently released in 2019 this Spanish acts debut album has been picked up by Blood Fire Death for a further push on the global death metal market. There are mixed results here within the dozen or so tunes spliced together with the odd intro/interlude or two and concluded with a Motörhead cover at the end. With an overarching brutal death metal blanket Metator leave the listener in no doubt that they want to carve indelible scars into your scabby carcass with every track and after the scraping intro piece, ‘Sound Of Dark Matter’, the title track unceremoniously does indeed do that. My indifference to this album comes from the lack of cohesion that infects some quarters of the songs, a lack of fluidity that creates an incalculable chaos that may be the bands intent but it manifests as dissonant confusion at times that makes the songs unable to coalesce into some sort of order that your ears can latch onto as on ‘The Unexpected Beauty Of Deformity’. That’s not to say that the musicianship isn’t lacking, far from it, as the guys can certainly play that is without doubt as ‘Suprema Agonia’ proves with its denser more Immolation like posturing.
Slowing down is ‘Kea’, its grooving chaos far more controlled here, allowing the flexing fluidity to really grab you in a chokehold and throttle the living daylights out of you as the squealing guitar listens like a death rattle. The brief interlude titled ‘Interlude’ would have been better just integrated into ‘I La Foscor Lil Va Cobrir Els Ulls’ as it really suits how it opens the song when it abruptly bursts into life. The warring intensity is first-rate accompanied by cool riff changes and morphing tempo dynamics I particularly enjoyed.
Another brief respite ensues with the short ‘Intro’ flowing smoothly into ‘Reencarnado En Tormenta’, again a dense penetrating drive is produced allowing the bands ultra-warring style with a touch of blackened malevolence to be on show imbibing the song with strident hostility as the second half of the album shows far more cohesion than the first though it could be just down to my ears attenuating to how this band writes their music. ‘Kannabykon’ is straight up death metal savagery, utilising some shrieking lead breaks and abrasive throat scraping with very guttural vocal alternation that links in with the following tune, the far more Cannibal Corpse inspired ‘Cabalgando Los Torbellinos’. The tune is relentless, a barrage of no nonsense old school death metal brutality that leaves only the quirky ‘Fraktalizer’ to close the release. The closer has something different about it, a little bit of fun if that’s the right word with a catchy riff on an album that is all about pulverising carnage before it leaves you with a totally rancid version of Motörhead’s ‘Bomber’. Their version is an insane noise version and quite possible the most fucked up one you’ll ever hear but sticks to the core fundamentals of the track even if the vocals would have Lemmy wondering what the fuck is that!
(7.5/10 Martin Harris)
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