Now first impressions of this album are very favourable. What we have here are ten slices of deadly and effective Norse steel that make longships out of your ears, sail straight into your brain, lay waste to all they can find and make such an impact that you know your gonna remember the event for years to come.
The first assault comes in the form of The View, So Disgusting (a comment on a popular US day time talk show?) - a track that is dripping brutal riffs, and features a vocal approach that comes over like some weirdly compelling death metal hip-hop. From there on in its death and sonic slaughter all the way, we gets cuts like the violently short You Will Scream, that is a sub two minute berserk assault of unbelievable fury; the prolonged battery of tracks like Muffled Screams (lots of screaming going on here), which do show a fair degree of subtly in the bludgeon, with some slower paced riffs to counterpoint some blindingly fast blast beat sections; and my fave cuts on show the frenzied Face Forced Down and the masterfully epic closer Hubris.
Maximum praise must be given to the guys performing this act of metallic conquest. The music here isn't groundbreaking, it follows naturally in the footsteps of previous viking raiders such as Bathory, Darkthrone, Amon Armath etc, but it is particularly well penned and performed, instantly likeable and is a worthy edition to Norways metal heritage.
In short this is a damn fine record, and one that will win Hellish Outcast a lot of friends indeed.
For fans of... Tyr, Forefather, Amon Armath, Noctem, Glorior Belli....
Seen this band live twice now and I would have put there music fairly and squarely into the brutal death metal camp - loads heavier than the bands you compare them with and not particularly in the 'Viking' genre as you describe it. If you want to be disembowelled and force fed your own innards, this is the album for you!!
ReplyDeleteFair dos, peoples ears do tend to pick up slight difference, I was only going on m take and the pages of blurb the label sent me. But I aint one for sub genres over all, so if I miss the exact musical pigeon hole from time to time, I stand corrected. But at least we can both agree that they are a great band and this is a damn fine album :-)
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