Polish Death Crew
"Of Mother Cries, of children's eyes
Of Naked corpses, of SS signs
Of suffer and pain, fear death horror
Humiliation, cruelty, smoke from the chimneys..."
The above is an extract from Alienacja's song 'Gas Chamber Melody'. A pretty bile churning set of lyrics you may say, but they're given even more poignancy when you learn that Alienacja are a Polish death grind-core band. It's one thing hearing western bands singing about the Holocaust, but there's something quite hard hitting about a Polish band writing a song called 'Gas Chamber Melody.' Most songs about Satanism and how scary the devil is can be water off a ducks back, for me at least. But 'Gas Chamber Melody' affected me more than I cared to let on at first. It's a simple, straight to the point piece of lyric writing, for example:
"Primal Fear, lights out
Growing Hunger, despair
Walking skeletons, tattooed number
Insanity, slaughter."
Moving on from the excellent lyrical content of this disc, Alienacja are pretty much your standard grind-core band with death metal overtones. The music is poundingly heavy, brutal and uncompromising in its go-for-the-throat attitude. Like most bands of this ilk it is over done somewhat, the pudding's been over-egged so to speak. Certainly by the fifth track, 'Undone,' I was beginning to drift off because the music all sounds very similar. This doesn't mean to say the music is bad, on the contrary, opening track 'Gravity' and 'Fire That Burns' has some first class riffage and clever tempo work. Sadly, when the band do come up with some fine ideas they seem too eager to get past it and on to the next musical passage which leads to a somewhat disjointed affair.
Because of this writing technique there is little that stands out in this album, there is nothing that gives any of the songs an identity. After several listens I still couldn't tell you which song was which except for 'Cold Front' because this track had a mellow piano beginning. But this album is quite enjoyable because the production is first class. The bottom end is like sludge mixed with a fine malt whiskey, heavy but potent. It is this killer sound that will keep you coming back to this album because the knob twiddling has made this extreme album very accessible.
As mentioned earlier, the lyrics on this album are excellent, however Hubert's vocal scream and growls means you can't tell a damn word he's saying, so for all I know the lyrics could be just a couple of poems he's written and is actually singing baa-baa black sheep. His voice is perfect for this grind-core music. It's violent, relentless and sometimes distorted. When you wrap the great production up with the excellent performances and occasional top rate ideas, you have an album that, although disjointed is a great listen in short bursts. Fans of this genre should think about picking this album up, the rest of us should still look on warily but this is a good place to start for the uninitiated. I'll leave you with a great line from 'Organism':
"In nooks of my brain, despair lurks".