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7 H.Target > 0.00 Apocalypse > Reviews
7 H.Target - 0.00 Apocalypse

Futuristic slamming - 80%

MohawksAmongUs, July 1st, 2020

The concept of "technicality" within metal encompasses a wide range of styles. There are bands that have no fear in showing their ability and talent through extremely elaborate compositions. Others, such as 7 H.Target, are much more subtle, yet still maintain a degree of complexity in their music.

Composition-wise, this is not very convoluted. The album is not full of masterfully-executed sweep picking or continuous shredding. So, where can one find the intricacy? In the details. One of the things that you realize after listening to this album twice or thrice is that the music itself suffers irregularities and tempo changes that are almost imperceptible. 7 H.Target constructs a futuristic universe through twisted melodies, experimental passages, and dissonant pathways.

Stylistically, this album strays a bit from the typical boundaries of brutal death metal. Soundwise, I liken this band to Wormed without the overt, in-your-face technicality. The guitars have a raw and dry tone. They switch back and forth between pummeling slams and experimental walls of sound, creating a chaotic ambience.

The slams I mentioned are pretty different from the norm, and I think that this is what makes 7 H.Target memorable. They are played in an wobbly, unsteady fashion, which basically allows the guitarist to add a bit more substance to them. They're often accompanied by random bursts of tremolo-picked notes, similar to the technical moments in any given Dying Fetus album. It all evokes a bizarre atmosphere, not commonly seen in death metal.

At times, the band speeds up and delves into a very noisy territory. Fortunately, they don't suffer the problems present in bands such as Defeated Sanity, where the muddy production overshadows the song-writing. Everything is adequately clear, and the aggressiveness of the music itself remains untouched.

Regarding the drummer, he does a good job at maintaining the syncopation of the riffs. His snare is very clanky (which I find really satisfying), typical for a brutal death metal project.

The vocalist is very fitting for this kind of music. He doesn't limit himself to an extremely deep growl, typical within brutal death metal; he also emits semi-intelligible screams.

This is a very interesting release and I consider it to be successful, mainly due to the fact that experimentation within brutal death metal is rather uncommon and honestly doesn't sound too appealing.

Where surreal futurism meets cybernetic rage. - 86%

hells_unicorn, May 13th, 2015
Written based on this version: 2014, CD, Sevared Records

There is something enthralling about fictional accounts of future conflict between man and technology, lest it wouldn't be such a popular theme in Sci-Fi literature and cinema. The notion of a servant that owes its existence to its master turning on him is an ironic eventuality, but one that is logical if the existence of A.I. is presupposed. While this theme is explored to a large extent in death metal, it usually comes about via some biological experiment that results in a monstrosity being unleashed on humanity, whereas a cold, steel body setting the world ablaze is a bit less common. But the young Russian act 7 H. Target has opted not only to delve into this theme, but use it as a vehicle for launching what is arguably the most unique and bizarre acts of genre melding to grace the slam-oriented side of brutal death metal, a style that is often averse to dabbling in technical forays, which would purportedly interfere with the heaviness factor upon which it relies so heavily. Be this as it may, 0.00 Apocalypse wants for nothing in terms of aggression, nor is it starved for brutally heavy slam riffs, rather it is an album that takes slam to an entirely different place.

In stark contrast to the likes of more deathcore oriented bands that dabble in technical and progressive strains of insanity such as Rings Of Saturn and Abiotic, this album manages to cross over into a whole other plain of sonic existence without heavy reliance on flashy lead breaks (though there are a few notable ones) or keyboards. Instead, the guitars are utilized in a manner that doesn't outright leap away from slam territory, but simply builds off the concept of using pinch harmonics for occasional detailing by using additional articulations of sound that expand the horizons of an existing formula. Some of these include elongated pitch bending that sounds similar to certain machine noises, whereas others are fragmented tech. lead fills that simulate computer processing noises, but despite their prevalence and also a heavy amount of frenetic blast sections and atmospheric breakdowns that sound quasi-progressive and mellow, at its heart this is slam that simply utilizes its patented move a bit more sparingly.

For the most part, the individual songs on here tend to stand on their own quite well, though the overall album has a decent pacing to it that manages to show through the wide array of jerks and jostles in tempo and feel. Whether its long excursions into futuristic warfare with enough changes to their name to boggle a mathematician such as "Regeneration Of Steel Organs" and "Cyborg Kombat", or shorter but near equally perplexing soups of elaborate twists and turns in "Gun-Handed Iron Killer" and the Meshuggah-like stomp machine "Technofetishist", a simple musical style finds itself so loaded up with details that it seems anything but simple. Perhaps the lone thing that resembles a conventional brutal characteristic is the gurgle work of guest vocalist and former Katalepsy front man Mirius, which is largely deep and burp-like, though it does vary itself a bit rhythmically and will often imitate the pulsing character of the guitar and drum work when the whole arrangement finds itself working in unison.

When Cannibal Corpse first committed Eaten Back To Life to the medium of recorded music in the early 1990s, as well as Nocturnus' equally trailblazing Sci-Fi flavored contribution at around the same time, there was a sense of looking forward that is almost equally present here. Granted, these crazy Russians have the benefit of a wealthy history to build their sound off of, to which the aforementioned early 90s American acts did not have access, but there is definitely something to be said for a band that decides to mess with the formula a bit rather than simply sticking to what has been working for the past several years, which has been something of a trend among a number of brutal acts lately. 0.00 Apocalypse is one of those rare albums that will have a fair amount of crossover appeal within the various ranks of more extreme death metal. It's an album that is intelligent enough to build a massive futuristic bridge to tomorrow, and crazy enough to blow the thing up just to see where all the pieces fall.

Russian Tech-Death Mutation - 100%

Thatshowkidsdie, August 9th, 2014

What the hell is going on over in Russia? Over the past several years, the country has become a hotbed for slam/brutal death metal, as evidenced by the likes of Abominable Putridity, Traumatomy, Disfigurement of Flesh and Katalepsy. But as good as they are, none of the aforementioned bands could have prepared me for the awesomely bizarre 7 H. Target, who specialize in schizophrenic/futuristic Tetsuo The Iron Man-obsessed slam that pretty much obliterates everything else out there. Their latest album is titled 0.00 Apocalypse and it does a great job sonically of living up to that title, coming off like the soundtrack to an ungodly war of man vs. machine.

0.00 Apocalypse is under thirty minutes long, yet the album manages to move in many directions thanks to 7 H. Target’s ADD-addled, highly technical approach to songwriting. Tracks such as “Gun-Handed Iron Killer” and “Cyborg Kombat” contort, convulse, fold in on themselves and explode, yet it never sounds like the band is trying too hard to sound bat-shit fucking crazy, they simply are bat-shit fucking crazy. Indeed, the beauty here is that in defiance of all logic, 0.00 Apocalypse holds together as a coherent work, its myriad twists and turns somehow working in favor of the songs rather than against them. It’s a testament to 7 H. Target’s ample skills as players and composers that they’re able to construct a focused killing machine out of all these seemingly random pieces of scrap metal.

One thing I’ve learned to expect from Russian slam bands is planet-smashing guitar tone, and 7 H. Target wields a heaviness that’s rivaled only by Katalepsy. I was surprised to see that the album was mixed and mastered by Neil Kernon, who at this point can probably make brutal death metal bands sound like a million bucks in his sleep; he does a hell of a job here of making 0.00 Apocalypse the heaviest-sounding BDM album I’ve heard this year. The sound is thick, exacting and somewhat clinical, fitting 7 H. Target’s mechanized musical warfare to a T. Between the density of the mix and the killer-cyborgs-playing-death-metal-in-a-whirlwind nature of the compositions, it can take a few listens to acclimate oneself to the album, but the rewards that come with doing so are ample.

7 H. Target is yet another killer act that’s pushing the genre into the future along with the likes of Wormed and Across the Swarm. At the same time, these guys sound nothing like either of those bands, putting a spin on things that brings to mind the dystopian aesthetics of films such as the aforementioned Tetsuo, Hardware and Ghost in the Shell, filtered through the lens of brutal death metal. If you’re into tech-death insanity, Russian slam, any of the films mentioned, or just awesome metal in general, don’t sleep on 0.00 Apocalypse.

Originally written for Thatshowkidsdie.com

Regenerative Slam Flesh - 85%

Akerfeldt_Fanboi, July 21st, 2014
Written based on this version: 2014, CD, Sevared Records

7 H. Target's 2012 full-length Fast-Slow Demolition was a refreshing breeze in the stagnate climate of slamming brutal death metal. Each track was an overwhelming chaos of modern Malignancy mixed with a healthy dose of groove and later drenched in Japanese body-horror references, leaving a disgusting record that backed up its slam with proper death metal. 0.00 Apocalypse while still having an equally nonsensical title, pushes the band away from the sampling and body-horror from the debut into a hellish cyber post-apocalypse that seems to move with a thematic continuity between the records.

Likewise, the music evolves. The maelstrom of riffs and breakdowns are dismembered, cauterized, and sewn back together with mechanical precision here - though not to say the debut was incredibly sloppy or amateurish by any degree. Here, however, the performance is nearly robotic in its precision and power. Even with their technical prowess, one of the most impressive aspects of the band was that they reserved their slower moments and slams for special occasions, leaving them for the most climactic points of their career (i.e. "Hara-Kiri Torture Mechanism") and letting the momentum of that apex propel the rest of the music into a blistering finale. Continuing in that trend, "Technofetishist" represents that same turning point of the album where the nearly nonstop ferocity of the previous tracks grinds to a halt for a grooving junction before turning the dial back up immediately. But this rendition is more intense, less organically disturbing with more imagery of mechanical halls of torture and cybernetic mayhem.

The songs themselves are just that: songs. Unlike many of their peers, this Russian trio writes tunes that have a cohesive feel and flow and stick to your brain for weeks on end and rarely leave without a lasting impression. I know I was desperately trying to play the opening riff of "Meatball Machine Story" for the first few days this album was in my hands. The squeal of harmonics and low-end rumbling all attributes to the inorganic material this album tries to fuse itself with, and in the process the listener is left scarred by the surgeries and attempts at grotesque combinations. These guys know how they want to sound, how pitch-perfect the placement of each groove is, and by God do they execute that idea with a pristine finish.

Every passage strikes the cold, lifeless tone in each slam and half-time before spitting out a stream of brutal death metal. Crunchy, roaring death metal abounds on this album with frequent dips into blasting insanity and endless tremolo that neatly wraps the musical package together into something special. As usual, the drumming of Mikhail is one of the highlights here, with each massive beat of the snare pulling the pieces of each song together into a cohesive whole. The tone of the album is phenomenal, with a clear production that suits the style of the music to the point where it mimics the progression of the band's lyrical content and concept of a transhumanist future. This, to them, is a vile, detestable future for humanity - or at least the incredible (and sometimes incredibly indecipherable) situations in the songs point to this. For instance "S-94" is a tale of a wasteland of sex addicts preying on any and all women they come across, even ending in a horrible sampled audio at the end with somber music devolving into noise and ending with sadistic laughter.

With every song the band submits the listener to a barrage of hyper-demented slam with an unforgettable twist of production and song-writing quality. They have a keen eye on their direction, clearly, and somehow pull off this brand of metal without forgoing the structure, composition, and quality of their music. From paper to performance, this album is a definite must-buy for any fanatics of the genre and anyone looking to take the final step to total assimilation.