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Satan - Atom By Atom
Released by: Listenable Records
Released on: October 16th, 2015.
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Atom By Atom, Satan's latest studio album (following on the heels of 2013's Life Sentence) finds the British New Wave Of Heavy Metal stalwarts plowing along full steam ahead. Produced by Dario Mollo the band - made up of Brian Ross (who does double duty in Blitzkrieg) on vocals, Steve Ramsey on guitar, Russ Tippins on guitar, Graeme English on bass and Sean Taylor (who did a stint in Raven) on drums - in very fine form indeed. There's more to this release than just some completely BAD ASS cover art.
Farewell Evolution opens things off in a big way with an absolutely massive high pitched scream almost immediately followed by a galloping rhythm section and a tight twin guitar attack. Ross' vocals sound great here (am I the only person who thinks he sounds like Rob Tyner from MC5?) but the band play super tight and super polished. This opener is a barnburner and it throws in some pretty killer riffs to keep things catchy.
Taking a decidedly more evil slant is Fallen Savior, a track that puts the guitars way up front to start things off but which lets the vocals weave through the mix in pretty slick ways. Two tracks in and you realize just how good the production is here. This album is slick, but in the best way possible. More great riffs, solid bass and drum anchoring it all - pretty traditional stuff but it works. Ruination gets some killer drums building perfectly to open things up a bit and let Taylor really go for it, leaving the rest of the band to play catch up, which they do very quickly. This is a very rhythmic, driven track. Great stuff, but it's the drumming that shines this time around. Things get sort of proggy about the three minute mark and the guitars get a little noodly, but they pull back from that little chunk of admittedly interesting experimentation to end the song with just the right amount of aggressive playing you'd hope for.
The Devil's Infantry has a cool staccato military sounding beat to its opening, but then the chains come off and the band launch into a super-fast track that approaches speed metal/thrash in spots - it's one of the stand outs on a typically very solid album. It's also a surprisingly technical song. Great stuff. The title track, Atom By Atom, also delivers. It's a bit more mid-tempo, with some cool soloing in the middle bridging the opening and closing of the track. It's good, but it doesn't grab you by the throat the way the track before it did.
In Contempt keeps the trend of hard driving metal continuing, it's pretty much ALL riff to start with, but Ross' vocals take it in unexpected directions. The guy's got a great voice and this one lets him show it off nicely, particularly towards the end where it gets pretty nuts. My Own God has a super rad 'chugga chugga chugga' guitar riff going on that gets your head banging and the horns in the hair from the get go. Where does it go from there? Exactly where you'd expect it to and exactly where you'd want it to. It's got a great late seventies/early eighties sound to it, it's sort of timeless and could have come from one of the band's earlier albums.
Ahriman is another track that borders speed metal territory in its intro but once it moves past that it's a fairly traditional NWOBHM track, complete with a killer falsetto scream, infectiously primitive riffing and a sing along chorus. Bound In Enmity starts a little calmly, a bit more restraint is heard on this track than on the others, but thirty seconds in and the band goes into full speed ahead mode but tricks you here and there with some stop/start stuff going on. The album closes out with The Fall Of Persephone, which opens with some effects heavy guitar then heads into some pounding drums and heavy bass lines to emerge into a flurry of more twin guitar awesomeness. Ross' vocals keep killing it and then three minutes in they go off on this really unexpected instrumental bit with a spoken work passage overtop only to end it all with a weird sort of choral vocal explosion that, without wanting to sound corny, is absolutely epic. THEN they hit you in the balls with a thrashy guitar assault, more fantastic vocals and yeah… this is the perfect way to end a legitimately great record. These guys never got the love that a lot of their counterparts did in the early eighties heyday and that's a damn shame. Maybe now that they're back and putting out records that are not good but legitimately great, that'll change.
