ALBUM REVIEWS
-(16)-
Dream Squasher
RELAPSE
Californian crushers return to continue their hate campaign
-(16)- were nasty back in 1993 and they’re still nasty now. You can follow the red line of vitriol from the LA quartet’s crushing new material back to their Curves That Kick debut, but age has conferred greater intensity and an even more muscular, thuggish gait. Opener Candy In Spanish is a bursting temple vein in song form, driven along on a scraping, Unsane-like shuffle and lurching, sledgehammer grooves. In contrast, Me & The Dog Die Together is flat-out rock’n’roll, albeit rock’n’roll that drives a combine harvester through your living room. Rippling Hammond organ gives the strung-out blues-doom of Sadlands some Clutch-like sparkle, while Acid Tongue strips -(16)-’s core riffing down to a vicious, minimalist thud. So many riffs, and all of them killer.
FOR FANS OF: Crowbar, Melvins, Conjurer
DOM LAWSON
ACxDC
Satan Is King
PROSTHETIC
Cali grind ballbreakers put Kanye West to the test
This California grind/powerviolence powerhouse is known as Antichrist Demoncore and if their chosen moniker riles you, then welcome to ACxDC’s world of provocation. The title of their first album in five years is a counterreaction to Kayne West’s Jesus Is King and the ‘cholo dudes-meet-Reservoir Dogs rejects’ promo photos have already irritated purist mores. But it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing and Satan Is King certainly swings with blast-furnace bass and guitars being tempered by a robust rhythmic sense and groove that not even emergency brake tempo changes can dilute. Hence, that swing is more the sound of a barbed wirewrapped baseball bat connecting with a grindcore fastball and hammering it into oblivion.
FOR FANS OF: Nasum, Nails, Rotten Sound
CONNIE GORDON
AHAB
Live Prey
NAPALM
Nautical funeral doom crew steer back to their base
Not only have Ahab grown in strength and versatility over the course of four albums, they’re also one of the few acts in the mostly studio-bound world of funeral doom able to translate their excruciatingly slow and suffocating music to the stage. This extremely well-recorded album chronicles a 2017 set at the Death Row Festival in their native Germany. But as tight and crushing as Live Prey is, regretfully the five lengthy tracks are culled solely from their 2006 debut album, The Call Of The Wretched Sea, where the abyssal four-piece had yet to achieve the sophistication of later masterpieces such as The Giant.
FOR FANS OF: Skepticism, Shape Of Despair, Draconian
OLIVIER BADIN
AL-NAMROOD
Wala’at
SHAYTAN PRODUCTIONS
Saudi Arabian black metallers wage war from the shadows
‘Saudi Arabian’ and ‘black metal’ isn’t a juxtaposition you often encounter – and for good reason, given the levels of secrecy the members of Al-Namrood have recorded eight albums under for fear of execution for apostasy. This is BM as protest music: raw, vigorous and produced with barebones equipment for whom black metal is literal war. A defiant swagger fuels the clash of Western-influenced extreme metal and traditional Middle Eastern instrumentation on , and the relentless pace of more than compensates for ’s raw production. It all serves to hammer home the ‘fuck you’ that the record and the band’s very existence represents. Long
