As the world spins on a precipice and the Doomsday Clock sits at 90 seconds to Midnight, “a time of unprecedented danger” LA based quintet Kommand have holed up in their underground bunker working on the follow up 2020 Maggot Stomp debut ‘Terrorscape. Like its predecessor it’s a short six track “album” weighing in at under the half hour mark. This is an exercise in militant thudding and primitive death metal of the old school variety. It lumbers away like a tank, chundering away over an irradiated post-apocalyptic landscape, crushing skulls and firing at scavengers attempting to penetrate its bulky carapace.
There’s a determined drive about it and rather than simply using all out aggression as blunt force the ‘Final Virus’ is confronted with a doomy demeanour as humanity crumbles in its wake. Channelling the spirit of bands such as Bolt Thrower, Asphyx, Dismember and Autopsy the music is tempered by the low ursine growls of Jesse Sanes which follow every part relentlessly, only dropping out occasionally for a short flailing guitar solo or sudden barrage of ramped up artillery drum thuds. ‘Chimera Soldiers’ suggest mutated bio-weapons unleashed for a mopping up operation of survivors and no doubt turning on their white-coated creators in revenge. There’s no winners here just a coarse, crusty canvas of dirt and disease delivered in a filthy tempest of extermination. A neat eerie guitar line summons in ‘Global Death’ and the funeral of mankind can easily be imagined with the inevitability that is cast as the track moves with slow groove laden crush.
‘Polar Holdout’ has some shrill guitar parts sounding like a siren and even at the frozen ends of the earth a nuclear attack is delivered proving absolutely nowhere is safe. There’s little deviation, few surprises here as one track rattles into the next. The mission is clear and concise, gnarly and ultimately nihilistic. By the time we arrive at final number ‘Collapse Metropolis’ you are suitably fatigued from this harrowing lesson in Armageddon and possibly thankful of the compact running time. There’s nothing here you haven’t heard before but Kommand’s form of deliverance hits hard and presses firmly on that red button as we move ever closer to launch status.
(6.5/10 Pete Woods)
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