Filth Catalyst

Hell Injection was a chaotic album. The style of this band is not smart or too polished because it’s a primitive form of black/death but that album was simply too childish and derivative for the ideas inside, if we don’t consider the awful production and the disordered noises.
Now, two years have passed since that album and these French perverted minds came back in 2003 to release a second effort, always under Osmose Production, and I must admit that something has changed in a good way, from the production to the songwriting.

Filth Catalyst starts with the gloomy sounds of “Words of Flesh”. Soon the guitars enter: the lead and the rhythmic lines collide perfectly to recreate a hellish atmosphere of depravation and violence. The blast beats are like nuclear detonation for their chirurgical precision and the unpolished, low snare drum sound. The vocals are ultra growled and they give the final touch to this dark approach to the primitivism of the black/death and sometimes they change, to be screamed too.
Despite the always a bit messy production, this time the instruments are a bit clearer and this production exalts the darkness of the notes instead of the chaotic approach.

The structures are definitely more mature and we can always mark out the quite high number of stop and go with fast restarts. Try to mix together the rotten, gore approach of the death metal with the darkness of the black. The tremolo and the palm muting are constantly switching in order to create a perfect combination of power and nastiness. We must not forget the lead lines because often they create the catchiest parts like also on the following “Ravaging the Nine Pillars”. The fury has remained untouched but the way the band plays is something more mature respect to the style of the first album.

Maybe it’s just a personal idea, but I’ve also found hints of industrial atmosphere here and I think that this is brought by the darkness of the sounds and the dark intros that we can often find before or in the middle of these songs. Another good thing to notice is that now even the more mid-paced moments are better done, even if they often settle on quite fast bass drums beats only. However, check the first slow parts on “Procession of the Black Synod” or the ones on the following “Hell Conquerors”. The fast parts are typical of a black/death metal one and now, thanks to a more reasonable production, the influences from Angelcorpse band are far more evident.

The power of this band is now well-filtered down through a good leap in technique and style. Now they have the ability of making hyper violent compositions with a mature touch and quite dynamic structures. We reach the end of this album with the easily recognizable tremolo riff of a devastating, great track like “Narcotic Angel's Terminal Apostasic Sin” that once again shows us a band at the top for the creativity and for the strong structures, with no weak moments.
I would have never ever expected such an improvement by a band that till two years before was a simply chaotic black/death clone.

I recommend this album to all the extreme metal freaks around who love incredibly dark atmospheres mixed with a terrific sonic violence.