Back in the day, we would have called this hardcore. It doesn’t use metal riffs, and unlike metal songs, it doesn’t build an atmosphere of heaviness. It throws out a sense of distraction and then hammers you with it. Not surprisingly, it’s verse-chorus all the way in riff pairs, and the vocalist does that shouted vocal that sounds like a frustrated drunk person trying to explain something.
Much of it is expansive hardcore in the style of later Disfear with some overlap with newer Napalm Death, meaning that the ranting eventually picks up intensity and you get a trudgy-churny part over which there’s meaningful chanting. It isn’t bad at all. However, more than about four minutes of it results in scrambled brains, because it’s essentially about hammering out one message and then looping it.
This might appeal to fans of bands like Tragedy who want poignant moments of voices raised in protest with their riffs. It makes the mistake all modern music does, which is that by turning all the intensity up to eleven, it ends up with an intensity of a constant one as it drones on in the background. All instruments are competent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUZjvKV14A4
Tags: call of the void, Hardcore
Great. It’s Napalm Death’s Words from the Exit Wound all over again. Or is it Napalm Death’s The Code is Red? More blast beats, same difference. Not surprised Relapse records released this turd either.
I wondered for a long time why contemporary death metal was so lifeless, trite and boring–why it lacked the power it used to have. The other day I read an interview with Mike Smith where he said the current death metal scene focuses too much on blast beats and strips the drums of any groove (and there’s a lot to be said about Suffocation’s current mediocre material in spite of Smith’s comments).
I think that’s why so much of the current material just flat-out sucks. There’s no willingness to create variation and explore. Steve Asheim, in a promotional video he did recently, talked about everything “To Hell With God” was going to have “tons of blast beats,” which killed any interest in the album. He’s writing the music to cater to a certain aspect at the sacrifice of everything that once made death metal powerful. The current scene mistakes blast beats for intensity and fail to see that those “intense moments” become that way when done appropriately within the whole framework of a song. I’d even say blast beats don’t even make a song vicious, but the spirit with which the song was written does.
Death Metal, what was once an artistic expression, has become pure consumption. Consumers want more blast beats so they can believe that what they’re listening to is intense, which in turn gives them an image of intensity and destroys everything death metal once was.
In other words, I hope this stuff fails.
Difference is at least those albums had a few memorable songs/moments. This Call of the Void stuff (man that’s a cool name, shame about the shitty band) is just blandness taken to new heights.