No escape.
OK, if you don’t like heavy then back off now, the minute you turn on “Purgation” you know you’re in for a dose of serious medicine. The Brit grindcore/death metal four piece deliver almost forty minutes of sheer brutality and aggression and from the opening riff there truly is nowhere to hide. It’s hard to believe this is their debut album because it’s so cohesive and tight that it puts scene heavyweights to shame after just one track and sounds like they’ve been at it forever.
Opener ‘Inception’ doesn’t mess about, 17 seconds of intense noise, with drums and guitars so fast it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, it’s like Napalm Death reincarnated at the height of their noise making career, mental, this morphs straight into ‘Merciless Ignorance’ with no break for you to draw breath should you want to.
The talent at work here is huge, just the sheer speed of the guitars and drums is incredible and the assault from the duel vocals is perfect, but when you factor in that their drummer is just 15, you can hardly believe the powerful hitting you hear can be made by him. If melody and tunes are your thing, you’re pretty much screwed here, this is crushing and claustrophobic wall of noise metal not epic and sweeping; don’t expect this band to suddenly break for a catchy chorus, there are hooks buried away under the wall of intense noise though and the riffs aren’t all chugga and chunky chords, sometimes like on ‘Hollow Lovers’ they are complex and heady.
For some though the fact that you have to have a strong stomach to delve deep enough into the album to find them might be too much, but to be honest that’s their loss and it should please real death metal fans no end; it’s great to hear a band produce an excellent record with such immense noise, sheer brutality and nastiness and no hint of compromise whatsoever, it’s a rare thing.