Calamity

It’s difficult to be fully objective towards albums, which you’ve been knowing since twenty years and were always so highly estimated by you. But damn, even though I know every single riff and arrangement on albums like “Calamity”, they still don’t bore me, what only confirms to me that they’re timeless, excellent pieces of music and I don’t need to be afraid of sounding pathetic and pompous when praising them more than some other people would. Why would I care anyway? In the case of “Calamity” I can really say that I love this album and along with “Thor”, “Invisible Circle” and “The Ultimate Incantation” / “De Profundis”, this is my favourite Polish death metal album of all time. I don’t accept any questioning of it; my opinion is what it is, if you don’t agree then piss off.

The album begins with “After Death” and damn, this is the best representative of this material, this song is an absolute crusher and has everything I love about death metal: utterly fast, furious parts, some heavy slow bits and small dose of melody – all generating a dark, evil, sinister atmosphere. Oh, this track is for me among the best death tunes I’ve ever heard and in my opinion it’s just as good as Vader’s “Dark Age” for example. But there’s more about “Calamity” than just one track and generally this is a really solid, fierce and quality album, with many quite memorable and crushing songs. I guess a lot of people use to compare Betrayer to Vader – and maybe there are some similarities, but I would not exaggerate much about it. More so, one can probably find some resemblances to Morbid Angel (they even have song titled “Maze of Torment…, I mean “Maze of Suffering” haha) and I don’t only mean (some) riffs or the aura of the music, but also some vocals from Berial, whose voice is truly powerful and angry! Love it.

Later on “In Sacrifice” stands above, for being among the most fierce songs here, sometimes it even reminds me good old Sinister – which is another important band, that I can compare Betrayer to. But I like that Betrayer feels so comfortable and great in both fast and slow, crushing heavy death metal as such “From Beyond the Graves” is simply fantastic and this is actually my second favourite tune here. I also need to mention “Before Long You Will Die”, as this is some weird and sick shit, not the usual blasting death metal, but an experimental song, which has really weird feeling, with one distorted, repetitive motif and some possessed vocals. Simple but awesome. The whole album, when compared to the previous demo, surely sounds cleaner and more powerful, the production is not so harsh anymore and musically it’s also less obscure and with not so obvious thrash / death fierce influence.

But the whole of “Calamity” has this awesome old school charm and feeling, which later a lot of death metal bands have lost for years. And I am happy that it grew old very well, it’s a vintage stuff, but still able to crush with every sound and still have that powerful, fierce strength, so this is why I easily call “Calamity” a classic album. Yes, I love it. It’s now twenty years, since I bought it on cassette (and I remember that first time I heard some songs from it was in the metal radio show, here in Poland… I was blown away!), I have the CD now, but I really wish to see it on vinyl once!

Standout tracks: “After Death”, “From Beyond the Graves”, “In Sacrifice”
Final rate: 90/100

The is the follow up debut from this early 90's Polish death metal act. The disappointment is this album is quite polished compared to the previous demo of two years prior. To pile dirt on the wound, we also get a less ferocious sound coming from the production and musicianship. With the addition of more slower sections added compared to the previous as well. Furthermore, you can pretty much kiss the thrash influence good-bye. However, that seems to be a common occurrence of extreme metal bands emerging into the 90's, dropping the thrash metal influences, and opting for a thicker death metal sound. Betrayer pops out a demo in 92 and then decides to drop the thrash highlights only two years later? You would think they would have stuck to a consistent sound of the previous, since they arrived a little late in the game anyway. On Calamity, they aren't the regular-neighborhood-Morbid Angel. But still didn't shy away from possibly recruiting a new populace of listeners with their easily accessible sound.

Betrayer added a few tone differences, especially since the guitars went down a few raw notches and sound almost lifeless, as well as the professional but wimpy sounding snare drum. There is quite a draining of reverb as well, giving Calamity more clean, up front vocal parts. Overall, the production hurt this album in my opinion, and was kind of a disappointment compared to Necronomical's more intense sound. When playing fast, the guitars are similar in execution of the previous style. However, the production quality is more sterile sounding, having a razor's edge recording quality. Another difference between the first and second release is the addition of a few more slowly played chugged sections per song. They also add a technique where he plays higher placed tremolo faster notes, and more harmonic squealed fills. I'm not too fond of the last techniques because the way he plays it, gives it a cheesy death metal feeling. The 6th track is an example of the overuse of harmonic squeals. The initial riff starts off with a slow chugged section, to be ended with a squeal. The problem is that the guitar line is short, yet, repeated over and over. Either for virtuosity, or sheer record of repetition, take your pick. The drum sound on Calamity has way too wimpy sounding of a snare. It is loud and professionally produced, but is tuned far too tightly and hasn't an ounce of savageness the way they recorded it. A few positive points is he started to add more snare rolls as well, giving it a different level technicality. There is the addition of more galloping double bass with the fair amount of slow sections. Which didn't give him a chance to do so on the first. Although, the vocal performance hasn't entirely changed, but the production values did. Displaying less reverb than the previous, with a more in-your-face and polished sound. He does have a slightly more higher growled voice. But it could be just inevitably how they altered it with editing and mixing.

Logically, Betrayer did the opposite of what most bands do. One might typically record an underdeveloped demo, then pump out an even better debut.

Up, up! And—

However, Calamity jumped 10 pegs on presentation and recorded a pristine sounding album. Making the album come out with a poppy snare drum, less reverbed vocals, and a razor sharp guitar sound.

'A good way to make the plants grow is to water them.' 'But they drowned!' 'You did too much—you simply went too far.'

I plan to stick with the demo, Necronomical Exmortis, since it was a more valid output of fierce death metal. Furthermore, they also dropped their thrash influences, and opted for a more accessible listenability. It stands apart from the death metal recordings at that time. But it seems like the scale was leaned towards the listener more than the musician. If they would have had a Scott Burns-ski in Poland to produce and distribute this widely, I could have seen them churning out additional albums. Albums that I wouldn't be listening to. However they would have ended up, unexplained forces appear to have caused Betrayer to drop its lifeline after this.

Up, up! And—gone.