Линия жизни

Well, this isn't what I expected. I picked up Linia Zhizni with hesitation, considering my lukewarm feelings toward technical death, but fortunately my curiosity got the best of me. I say fortunate because this album was definitely a pleasant surprise. As is well known, the problem with most modern tech death is that the performers tend to put their instrumental prowess over songwriting. Far over it, actually, sometimes to the point of the music becoming an incomprehensible babel of notes. This is the antithesis of Beheaded Zombie's case, as their talent is focused on crafting great songs, not blindly splicing together a bevy of technically proficient riffs into a convoluted mess. Basically, think Athiest and Atrocity for a comparison, not Necrophagist and Brain Drill. In fact, I would personally label Beheaded Zombie as avant-garde death metal in lieu of technical. This is taking into account how abstract and unusual their music is.

The first track, "Mizantrop", demonstrates just how well this group plays together. Adventurous guitar lines weaving into and out of one another, flawlessly executed tempo changes, and riffs that seem to dance all over the fretboard with relative ease. It's a good song, but pretty straightforward for Beheaded Zombie's lofty standards. The opening of "Shramy" is where the immensely talented bass player starts to steal the spotlight on this album. Utilizing a full, beautiful tone, the bassist makes many an appearance on the album, serving as the bringer of bizarre fills and intricate solos to really make things interesting. Again, the riffs are just fantastic, and more importantly, it all comes together to form a good song. Also, the drummer has a lot of variety that help make the songs flow so well, sans reaching any type of staleness. The performance is airtight in evey aspect. By the time "Bezumie" comes around, I naturally start to examine the vocalist's abilities. He's a decent singer, relying almost entirely on the low pitched, slightly raspy growl that seems to take the forefront in his repertoire. I'd say he has a fairly understandable growl, although I use the term "understandable" loosely because I can't speak Russian either way. Every song on this album is good, each riff as abstract as the last, each tempo change as against conventional wisdom as can be, and yet everything makes sense as an entirety.

There is a pretty big drawback though. The song lengths average barely over 3 minutes in length. With 5 tracks not even reaching a paltry 3 minutes, the songs feel like they're over as soon as they begin. That's exaggerative, but since the songs are so satisfying otherwise, that's exactly how it feels. I'm not asking for 9 minute epics, but at least one track reaching the 4 minute mark would have been nice. I'm positive that they have the creativity to fix us up a more filling listening experience, so the fact that they didn't is a little bit disappointing. Not only that, but several of the songs have something like 10 to 20 seconds of empty space at the end of it. That's just annoying.

The production is very lively and clear, with some nice effects sprinkled around, especially in the tone of the bass. This album really does have some of the most luscious bass production I've ever heard. The drums are balanced so perfectly with everything else, being neutral in the overall mix, as not to steal attention from the rest of the musicians. The production is cleaner than what's typical for death metal, but I think it works well in this case.

Overall, Linia Zhizni is an album that could have been great if not for the unsatiatingly brief song lengths. It's still a good album, and certainly unorthodox enough to warrant going out of your way to check out at least once.