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Black Breath - Slaves Beyond Death

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    Ian Jane
    Administrator

  • Black Breath - Slaves Beyond Death



    Black Breath - Slaves Beyond Death
    Released by: Southern Lord Records
    Released on: September 25th, 2015.
    Purchase From Amazon

    Black Breath hail from Seattle. It's rainy and gloomy there, so it's no wonder that the band - made up of Neil McAdams on vocals, Eric Wallace on guitar, Mark Palm also on guitar, Elijah Nelson on bass and the mighty Jamie Bryum on drums - deal in some pretty dark material. Slaves Beyond Death, their third album, keeps that bleak tradition alive. Produced by Kurt Ballou of Converge, it's eight tracks of the kind of metal that leaves you with blisters on the inside of your ears.

    Pleasure, Pain, Disease kicks things off in a particularly aggressive style and it fits right in alongside the sound that these guys established with their first two full length albums. It takes two minutes for the vocals to kick in but once they do, this is guttural, fierce and primal in speed, tempo and sound - and that describes pretty much every one of the eight tracks on this slab.

    Slaves Beyond Death, the title track, is a bit more of a sludge track, but when that kick drum goes off double time there's no doubt that these guys are keeping things above the legal speed limit even when it seems like they might be going a little slower than last time. Lots of weird, heavy, doomy atmosphere in this one combined with some death-ish vocals give it a pretty unique sound. Reaping Flesh, as cheery as it might sound, is actually a pretty aggressive blast of crossover. There's death and grind in here but so too are there elements of stoner rock, trash and speed metal. They are consistent in their sound but at the same time they experiment a bit from track to track and this song sees them toy with some unexpected tempo shifts while still working within the varied boundaries that they've set for themselves. Does that make sense? Not really. It's a heavy, sick sounding five and a half minutes of nastiness, let's leave it at that.

    Seed Of Cain marks the end of the first side with an acoustic style intro, it's calm, serene, almost pretty… but still dark. The sun doesn't shine around these here parts, no siree. Around the one minute mark though, it explodes like you know it's going to explode and like you want it to explode. This one is, once it gets the intro out of the way, a straight ahead thrash track and the band prove once again that they can handle this style impeccably. There's some weird, unexpected melody to the guitar playing here that stands out though. It's pretty damn great.



    Arc Of Violence builds for a good long minute until McAdams unleashes one of the most terrifying, guttural screams you're ever going to hear. The band breaks things down a bit here, and then hit a power metal stride that'll have heads banging in no time. The vocals are growled, unhinged and pure evil but there's a bit of a classic metal sound here underneath all of the noise and tone. It works really well. A Place Of Insane Cruelty has this weird sort of marching band drum sound to it at first, then the guitar comes in as the first layer, then the drums, then some guitar on its own and then the drums under the guitar and…. then it all just sort of goes for it. This is beautiful mid-tempo sludge/stoner/doom stuff. It's swampy, a little hazy even, and not as flat out aggressive as some of the other songs on the recording but again, when Black Breath changes things up, they still somehow manage to sound like Black Breath. Which is a good thing.

    Burning Hate has a killer instrumental intro that goes on longer than you expect it to but that definitely pulls you into the fray. Cue the scream to change course and after that hits you upside the head, we hit a giant wave and the boat gets rocked. This is another thrash style assault, it's fast and tight and out to make your hurt. This seems like the type of track that will go over incredibly well live. Last but not least, we get Chains Of The Afterlife. A quiet, sort of melancholy intro reminds us at first of The Thing That Should Not Be from Metallica's Master Of Puppets album. It builds as it progresses but stays in that vein for a good three minutes before it goes into a few different directions at once. It's an instrumental track but it stays interesting, weird even at times.

    So yeah, the new Black Breath album. This is a whole lot of really dark beer swilling, bottle throwing, circle pit slamming metal with occasional prog and experimental bits and pieces tossed into the fray to keep things from getting too predictable. The production is slick but not too slick, the band sounds incredibly tight here and the vocals are just raw. If you've appreciated the first two records that these guys put out, this is in some ways more of the same but at the same time a progression of sorts. They don't reinvent themselves here but they do take some chances and those chances pay off. I think I like this better than Heavy Breathing and Sentenced To Life.


    • Andrew Monroe
      #1
      Andrew Monroe
      Pallid Hands
      Andrew Monroe commented
      Editing a comment
      " I think I like this better than Heavy Breathing and Sentenced To Life." That's some heady praise...Sentenced in particular is an amazing album (and Heavy ain't no slouch). Love these guys, one of the most exciting bands around today. I will have this in my jonesing hands Friday and I can't think of a better way to kick off the weekend.

    • Ian Jane
      #2
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      Ian Jane commented
      Editing a comment
      You're gonna dig it, Andrew.
    Posting comments is disabled.

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