Vitriol – Pain Will Define Their Death
True to their name, Portland’s Vitriol unleash roughly 13 minutes of vicious death metal malice on their new EP, Pain Will Define Their Death. This trio possess a relentlessly bludgeoning sound that rests somewhere between the grooves and technicality of modern death and technical death metal, and the swirling maelstroms of avant-black metal acts such as Deathspell Omega and Dodecahedron. Though the release only contains three tracks, Vitriol make sure that each minute, each note, hits as hard as possible. The guitars conjure slews of intertwining riffs that build from muscular, death-addled grooves, to vile, serpentine licks with ease. The songs are rife with ugly dissonance and noisy riff shapes that often transform into more standard, palm-muted death metal assaults and thrashing grit, but eventually end up morphing to more and more macabre shapes and melodies. This aural hell is made more intense by ridiculously pummeling drumming and gruff vocals seething with angst. In between the devilish six-stringed wizardry and the skull-rattling percussion, Vitriol have crafted a short, but extremely sweet and satisfying extreme metal release.
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: November 10, 2017
Label: Independent
Favorite Tracks: “Pain Will Define Their Death”
For Fans Of: Nile, Morbid Angel, Artificial Brain and Deathspell Omega
Dead Sons – We Die Here
Connecticut’s Dead Sons are off to a promising start with their debut EP release, We Die Here. With its off-kilter, disfigured riffing and its corrosive bitterness, We Die Here provide three caustic tracks of solid chaotic hardcore that will appease fans of early Gaza material, The Network, and other similar acts. The instrumentation is violent and unpredictable, with the songs transitioning from more hardcore and metalcore oriented attacks, to lurching, dissonant ugliness without warning. The guitars employ rapid bursts of noisy, burly riffs embellished with frantically-shifting time signatures and heightened by furious drumming. The instrumentation will often spiral into discordant mathcore hell or opt for lengthy pseudo-melodic dirges (see “Tombs”), while distressed, angry vocals signal the coming changes in mood or style within the song. The recording quality of the EP does leave a lot of be desired, but on the same token the rawness of the production somewhat complements the angst of these songs. At any rate, Dead Sons have put their best foot forward with We Die Here and will hopefully be the first of more recordings to come.
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: May 28, 2017
Label: Independent
Favorite Tracks: “Tombs”
For Fans Of: Gaza, The Network, Ed Gein, Crowpath and Converge
