Hell Unleashed

Well, this band has done a good job of staying under the radar – I never even knew they (or their label for that matter) existed until I got this CD. I’m glad I did though, since this is a neatly crushing slab of thick, twisted death metal. Essentially throwing Suffocation and Deeds Of Flesh in a blender, these Czechs have created a monstrous disc full of ear-shredding violence, without falling into the “mindless brutality for it’s own sake” which can be a death-trap (no pun intended :P ) in this genre.

It helps that they manage to mix up their songwriting a bit. It’s not just “fast-slow-fast-slow” with no dynamics, instead they alternate between ultra-technical and blazing epic – “Death Is Nothing…” being the best example of the latter, a 7-minute odyssey dragging you through a constantly shifting musical soundscape, while “God’s Requiem”and “Starting Point Is Massacre”are two of the better examples of the former. The production here is thick and dry, a touch muddy but never bad enough to distort the musical content – everything is perfectly audible, particularly the killer drum sound, no clickity-click undermixed double bass here, they actually sound like bass-drums instead of a typewriter. They’re also mixed properly, loud enough to propel the momentum of the songs but never so high that they become the predominant instrument, which is a major bonus point.

Lyrically, it’s the usual “fuck off religion” and “lots of people die in horrible massacre” stuff, written in charmingly flawed English. Nothing revolutionary, but the vocalist delivers it in the usual gut-churning growl so it hardly matters. No one’s forcing anyone to read them, although they do make plenty of good points – just none that haven’t already been made before. But hey, this is brutal death metal, so it’s all about getting your head kicked in, not being enlightened by philosophical genius. As for the head-kicking, this CD delivers that in ample quantities. This one is definitely worth tracking down for fans of above-average death metal devoid of frilly nonsense.