Showing posts with label Humanity's Last Breath. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Humanity's Last Breath. Show all posts

Tuesday 24 October 2017

Humanity's Last Breath "Detestor" (2016)


Their name alone gives you an insight to the punishment awaiting. Hailing from Sweden this five-piece outfit push metallic bludgeoning to new insidious lows with a name to stick like a thorn in your mind. It captivates fatality with a simple expression, no need for any repulsive or repugnant language as so many extreme bands go for. The music too will also set them aside from the competition with what Id describe as approaching upon an inevitable "Post-Deathcore", stripping out the worst tropes from the sound and pushing whats left further down the rabbit hole of ruthless pummeling noise abuse.

The five songs that make up this short release do wonders in the immediacy. Deep rumbling guttural vocals, roaring with intensity over disgustingly down tuned monstrous guitar tones making a textural treat of punishing aesthetics to wallow in as the erratic interpolation of split second harmonic squeals and bleeding screeches will have one dizzying in despair. Its technically impressive and proficient but loaded with a dose of groove if you enjoy hearing open string chugs fretted violently in tandem with the swing and sway of grizzly drums, pounding with a vision of utter brutality.

In the long run less of this Djentmare, see what I did there? "Djent" plus "nightmare", sticks in the mind. For all its punishing heavy and sporadic violence, little melody or purpose beyond the obvious emerges. The individual grooves, riffs and guitar work become a shadow of the overall beast. Impressive in its moment but not lasting. In the days Ive been enjoying this, I can't recall a riff jumping back at me or something being lodged in the mind. Instead a couple of impressive ideas leave a mark, like the title track that drops in a wretched, harrowing, shrill scream behind a macabre "break down" of sorts. The scream gives a real sense of a human soul shocked to the core.

The guitars with their mammoth textural tones, gritty, loose and sludgy are so well preformed they are paradoxically tight, sharp and precise too. They make a strong impression whereas the vocals feel commonplace, atypical screams and timings. The drums are very accommodating of the other instruments, always syncopating and doing little to be in the forefront bar the occasional foray into blast beats. Its a bitter sweet record, enjoyable now but not lasting. This band have serious potential but are limiting themselves with the conventions of Extreme Metal and Deathcore.

Rating: 4/10