It’s been a while since I wrote a review, since my life has been filled with mock exams, auditioning for pop-rock bands (sorry guys, there’s more girls in that area), and the like. Encirclement has been lying around for a long time, so I decided to give it the final eyes closed spin, and jump onto it.

Although some people would’ve put old-school Death Metal as the genre for this album, I’m a bit hesitant. Yes, Encirclement clearly shows a Death-influence. But, where Death is clean, sophisticated and tight, these guys are harsh, raw and heavy. So, style-wise I’d place them somewhere between old-school death metal, for their death influences, and death ‘n roll for their rolling rhythms. Old-school Death ‘n Roll anyone?

Pour yourself some beer and another one over your head, sniff your sweaty armpits, scratch your crotch. Press play on Hatred United and bang your head like there’s no tomorrow. Windmill when you can, bang your fists on the wall, kick your army boots through the TV screen and shout foul language at your mom cooking dinner.

For Hatred United, two Finnish underground formations joined their love for raw and hatred for everything else into eight songs of noise. The first, Gasmask Violence, is new to us, but Vuohi is a group we’ve seen before when we reviewed their The Rising Era of Goat release about two months ago. Kick it in gear!

Time for our daily portion of Finland. While I mentioned Deuteronomium under the Entrails article, I remembered that they recently put out a new album. Before the album was recorded, bass player Manu Lehtinen mentioned: “Our fourth studio album will be a concept album, based on a book titled ”Devotions upon Emergent Occasions”. This book was written by english poet and priest John Donne (1572-1631) when he was suffering a nearly fatal illness. The doctors gave him only a little, if any hope of surviving. During his convalescence he wrote a series of meditations and prayers on health, pain, and sickness. After all, he did survive and lived several more years.” Interesting story bro, I thought. But how’s the music?

Personally, I must say that I’m a tad disappointed with this album. After the epic From the Midst of Battle and their promising Retaliatory Strike EP, I was hoping for a masterpiece of pure Death N’ Roll. This is not what I thought it would be. The Death ‘N Roll is still there, but the magic is just gone. The growls weakened down to yelling and the narrative is done with an English accent in stead of the Finnish “rally” accent, which I prefer, but they seem to despise.

Death ‘n’ Roll has been taken to new heights with this recent début album of ambitious Slovenians by the name of Hellcrawler. Wastelands takes the template of Death ‘n’ Roll à la Entombed and then adds an interesting mix of Sludge, Crust-Punk and D-beat. If you can get that around your head, then read on. Free music inside!

Are there any Death ‘n’ Roll fans in the house? If so, we have a treat for you! Helltrain are a Swedish band active since 2002, who, like many bands we try to bring you, offer their music to you for free. Two albums and an EP so far. As is the norm, click ahead for some samples and the link to get some.

One of the beautiful things about running a place like this is that people drop you new bands all the time. Some stuff is bad. Some stuff is ace. Earlier this week, visitor Gustav, whom I suspect inhabits Sweden, dropped us a line about a band he had seen live in the weekend. A band named Septekh.

Now I don’t know if it’s done purposely or not, but Septekh sounds the same as septic, and last time I checked that was something dirty. At least it is when you talk about a septic system (as opposed to septic equation, which is a polynomal of seven degrees, or a septic infection, though that still sounds nasty). Apparently septic tank is also the word for ‘American’ in Cockney Rhyming Slang, because Septic Tank sounds like Yank. Crazy Brits.

But that aside. Back to the dirtiness of Septekh’s name and whether it’s intentional or not. Why would it be? Because they’ve got that dirty, greasy sound the world first got largely experienced through Motörhead. Beer-drinking hard Rock ‘n Roll filth back then, now the early beginnings of Metal, which is why we love it. Intentional or not, I still think it’s superbly appropriate!

Some would not actually call this Death Metal, but since when is music something discrete anyway? Fact is that these guys started in 1987 and have contributed a lot to the genre, despite (or perhaps because of?) the fact that they experimented with other influences as well. This one’s called I for an Eye Go read/watch!

Tags: death, death 'n roll, Swedish, thrash
Posted in Music Video | No Comments »