Asylum Cave

I am no longer the biggest fan of death metal. The genre in recent years has bored me a great deal and has seemed to be growing stale rather quickly. The revival of old school death metal has started giving me some hope though and now this...

"Asylum Cave" is an abomination of a record and I mean that in the best way possible. The album is essentially the musical equivalent of stepping into the mind of a schizophrenic and I suppose that makes sense since the band's vocalist Julien Truchan, works in a mental institute. That being said, this record has to be one of the craziest one's I have yet had the pleasure to hear. It reminds me of an odd combination between Ted Maul and Aborted. Ted Maul for the absolute insanity of the record and Aborted for the pure brutality and dark humor that encompasses the CD as well.

The record as a whole is insanely entertaining and has some incredibly memorable riffs. One need only look at "Hostile" and "Shadows Descend" to hear what I mean. Throughout the course of the record, the riffs go from sounding hideously serpentine (almost black metal like in parts), to thrashy, and finally back to the absolute sledge hammer heavy like riffs that we have come to expect from some of the best death metal bands. The record has an incredible amount of variety and that greatly helps in keeping things interesting. The album also benefits from just how fast and chaotic the music is, never really letting up very much at all for the entirety of its play time. I have come to find that this gets very old usually, but the guys in Benighted keep it so chaotic and all over the place that it is hard to keep up with everything that is going on. Consequently, the record is great for repeated listens, allowing the listener to discover new things each time they listen to it and that alone, is a huge plus in my book.

Truchan's vocals probably have a lot to do with this. His vocal style constantly switches between near black metal screeches, to low death metal growls, to pig squeals, and occasionally to hardcore styled shouting. The constant morphing of the vocals throughout each songs duration does quite a lot in keeping things interesting and Truchan is one hell of a vocalist to be able to employ each and everyone of those styles. Don't get me wrong though, it's not as if Truchan is ground breaking as a vocalist. But he sure as hell beats many of the growlers who stick to the standard guttaral "how low can I make my vocalz guiz?" out there today. It's an impressive effort on his part for sure.

The drummer is impressive enough considering the incredible speed and chaotic nature of the music, but there are a lot of metal drummers who could probably fair just as well on this record. Guitars, as I said, are very good. However, the bass does get drowned out a good amount on this CD. It's there for sure, but it is constantly over shadowed by the main guitars. But that honestly doesn't bother me very much considering just how insanely awesome the guitars are. Production is top notch and gives the record an incredible amount of power on a pair of headphones.

However, the record is certainly not flawless. I did take off points for the tendency of some songs to drag on, but those are few and far between. The drowning out of the bass guitar also cost the CD some points but as I said, it doesn't detract from the record that much.

To conclude, "Asylum Cave" is a beast of a record and one of the best death metal releases that I have heard in a long, long time and after hearing a lot of the bands other stuff, I know that I am gonna be spinning these CD's for quite some time. This record is a breath of fresh air in the murky, tepid swamp of death metal and it demands a listen, or 2, or 100.

These guys are pretty much the holy grail of metal for me. They've got everything I've ever wanted to hear in a metal band and are by far one of the most under appreciated bands working today. That's due in part to their never having toured in the U.S., which has seriously stunted their exposure over here, but it is my goal to see them live at least once, even if it means shelling out hundreds of dollars for plane tickets to France one day.

I've been following these guys for the better part of a decade now and their albums probably get the highest rotation on my iPod. After 2007's ICON, I wasn't sure if and how they would ever top that record, and was beginning to think they had taken an "indefinite hiatus" as so many bands have been doing lately, since it was going on 4 years without the mention of new material. But lo and behold, out of nowhere, Asylum Cave materialized into existence. I'd imagine the feeling I had when I heard about it being akin to a religious zealot spotting Christ's face in their fish n' chips; pure, almost spiritual elation.

And let me tell you, they really don't disappoint. From the sampled intro and the first 10 seconds of the opening track "Asylum Cave", my face immediately began to melt and my ears nearly fainted from the multiple aural orgasms being thrust upon them. To give you a little background of the band, they play a perfect amalgamation of death metal, grindcore, hardcore, black metal, and slam metal. While the mix may sound kind of overwhelming and almost hack-ish, they are one of the few bands who fuse nearly every style of metal together perfectly, basically creating a genre all their own. They've infused everything from reggae chants to DJ samples to hip hop into their sound, blending it in the most tasteful ways.

With Asylum Cave the band have yet again cranked it up a notch. They've clearly evolved as musicians and have yet again written some of the catchiest and heaviest riffs ever recorded. Vocalist Julien Truchan has the range of a death metal god, employing nearly every style of scream and growl into their songs and executing them all perfectly.

Speaking of vocals, another big stand out on this record are the guest appearances. From the first line of "Unborn Infected Children" I knew right away that it was Aborted's Sven de Caulwe backing Julien's immortal shrieks. (If you're familiar with Aborted at all you know Sven has one of the most distinctive screams in metal). While the fact that he's on here at all is enough to make me put on my happy pants, it's how his vocals are used that really make the song stand out. Most of the time, when someone makes a guest appearance on an album, it's for one verse or a few screams here and there to enhance the song. But in "Unborn" Sven and Julien split the vocal duties nearly in half throughout the entire song, creating an awe-inspiring and outright brutal back and forth between the two thats effectiveness is palpable.

The other notable guest appearance is by that of Devourment's Mike Majewski. While I am a big fan of Devourment, I have to say that I wouldn't be able to pick out Mike's voice in a six-pack of other slam metal vocalists. That's not to say he doesn't do it well, just that it's pretty much the standard low end gurgle that permeates the genre. It was only after I read the liner notes that I realized those putrid growls on "A Quiet Day" were that of Mr. Majewski. Again, it's not just a small section of the song that features Mike but a tasteful sprinkle throughout the whole thing. It is very evident that the men of Benighted put a lot of thought into the composition and execution of these songs.

Of course I have to speak out about the drumming on the record. Drummer Kevin "Kikou" Foley has outdone himself this time. While always a competent drummer (his work on ICON was outstanding), he's managed to elevate himself to the level of death metal virtuoso over the last four years, equating his playing with some of the greatest of the genre (Tim Yeung, Tony Lazarro, Gene Hoglan, etc). Not only is his playing inhumanly fast, but--like the rest of the band--it's tasteful. He almost never plays the same fill twice, and just when you think you know what beat he's going to throw behind a certain portion of the song he surprises you and does something completely different but utterly effective. He's an up and comer in the genre and I hope he expands his talents even further in the coming years (it seems he has joined another French-bred [get it?] band Disavowed, who are also high up on the list of technical prowess, so I'm eager to hear what he does with them).

All in all Asylum Cave is a metal head's wet dream. From beginning to end the album tells a story and doesn't let up for a second. The prolific nature of the songs keeps you interested and begging for more as the album plows through to the end. I really hope these guys get more attention here in the States and start playing some shows out here. If they do I'll be first in line to see them tear it up over here. But for now I will eagerly await whatever they offer up next. I just hope I don't have to wait another 4 years for the next one. Early prediction: Asylum Cave is the album of the year, and that's saying a lot as 2011's slate is chock-full of new releases from some of the heaviest hitters in the scene.

I haven't been exposed to much of the Benighted backlog, with the exception of the past two albums Identisick (2006) and Icon (2007). I found neither to be all that impressive. Nonetheless, the band's technical execution, raw ability and incessant extremity seem to have won them a lot of high praise, and certainly their sound is not all that common among the French hordes. I'd most compare their output to Napalm Death's recent streak, incorporating elements of grindcore and death metal, but this mayhem factory is not above incorporating downright hardcore riffs, slam death, melodic guitar solos and other nuances into the killing spree for an invigorating, diverse effect that helps the attention span from teetering into unconsciousness among the monotonous blasting.

In other words, Benighted whips up a carnival of controlled chaos here that couldn't be tighter if it wore a chastity belt. I can't claim that all of the individual riffs the band conjures up are that interesting, but there's enough of them that several are bound to stick. Take something like "Let the Blood Spill Between My Broken Teeth", with its rampant, cavorting rhythms, brutal bite and bark vocals, melodic breakdown and walls of chords, all powered by a whirling human furnace of energy in drummer Kevin Foley. The further into the core of the Asylum Cave, the more crass and punishing, yet intriguing the content becomes, like the maddening grinder "Prey", the curious samples and storming mosh breakdowns of "Fritzl", the driving pig squeal saturated death of "Unborn Infected Children", or the hurricane bottoming of "A Quiet Day" with its timely spurts of melody. When you consider that the French are essentially battering you stupid for 45 minutes, you come out of the experience surprisingly lighter, as if they've clipped a great weight from your shoulders: nothing that happens to you today will be this brutal, so try and relax...

There are not many areas in which I found the material here lacking. Perhaps the vocals are a little too obvious and typical of the style, unable to evoke much distinct character, just the latest in a long strain of Carcass and Napalm Death worshipers. But there's no question that they function within the milieu, punctuated with enough percussion that they won't distract you. And perhaps a good percentage of the guitar riffs feel rather bland on close scrutiny, but they do compensate with some scorchers. The production of the album is intense, fully exposing you to the sore and twisted, swelling joints of its composer. There are a couple of guest vocalists, too, including members of Devourment, Aborted and the bizarre act Pin-Up Went Down. I'm not going to say that I loved this record as if it were my newborn child, but the compositions are beyond competent, and I've had more fun here than their other full-lengths I've experienced.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com