This sure as hell ain’t no run of the mill extreme metal release. There is a quirky ‘avant-garde-ness’ to this Melbourne five piece’s sound that sets them apart from the extreme pack.
Don’t worry, narrow minded ‘brutal’ metalheads reading this, there is still plenty of crushing, blast beat driven fury within the grooves of this album, it’s just that these guys take a slightly different approach, and they are way better off for it. A lot of the idiosyncrasy comes from the vocals, which owe as much to Mike Patton and Adam Glynn of Frankenbok and Five Star Prison Cell fame as they do to a Glenn Benton or a George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher. But there’s also a twisted and unconventional vibe to the rhythms and overall delivery of this band’s peculiar brand of metallic lunacy.
So fans of extreme death metal, and those who favour something a little more left of centre from their heavy sounds will find something to like on Crossing the Rubicon. Plus, almost needless to say, the musicianship has all the precision and power required to deliver such extreme music with such conviction. This band is the real deal.
The production is typically in your face as well, straddling that fine line between rawness and clarity that this style of music needs. It ain’t too pretty or overproduced, but it still manages to sound great anyway. No surprises when you open the cover and see the name Ren from Reich records, this time on mixing and mastering duties. The man is a Melbourne heavy music icon. Kudos must also go to Nick Rackham and the band themselves, who shared recording and production credits.
Song-wise, their tunes take a lot of dynamic twists and turns, and their arrangements are highly non-traditional, and so it takes a number of listens for their songs to weed their insidious way into your psyche. But give this album your time and your patience, and each individual track’s unique charms with become apparent in time. Especially a tune like ‘End Game (G.O.D)’, which injects some twisted melody into the mix amid the chaos.
If it’s immediacy and instant gratification you seek in your sounds, best you look elsewhere. But if you favour a little strangeness in your extreme music of choice, then do yourself a great favour and check out these Melbourne boys. They’re doing the avant-garde thing as well as anyone right now.
http://houseofthumbs.net/