What up, beak freakz? Notice the “z”? Yeah, I’m going nu-metal; a-parrot-ly it’s making a comeback. Nah, juzt kidding. Did you know there were two bandz named Portal? I did, and I’m going to review one of them. Oof.
What time is it? Huh? PORTAL — no not that one, the one from Sweden — release For All That Is Damned to Vanish, and, as one might expect, it’s Swedish death metal. OK, OK, OK — it’s Swedish melodic death metal. There’s not much to distinguish this band from a ton of its ilk. I mean, the only way I can describe it is the aforementioned genre classification. I basically just reviewed this because their name is Portal and I want to get more views, and people LOVE Portal. Not this one, though. This is passable death, and it’s really hard for me to hate this, but it’s really hard for me to love it. There’s a tinge of black metal thrown in, the throat-scrape vocal style, the high-pitched vocal, then some talky parts. It seems they took most Euro metal stuff and threw it into a blender, and out popped this. It’s not bad at all, just not great. I dunno, if you’re into this style, this is cool; if not, it’s an utter waste of time. 4 Fucking Pecks.
https://youtu.be/U21oBIGeMHU
Ahhh, ACHERON, how I REALLY want to like you more than I do. I mean, there’s usually boobs on your record covers (cartoon boobs on this one), there’s blood (also, check), you play death metal, you’ve been around forever, and are Satanic (the LaVey kind, not the cartoon kind, unlike the cover). BUT your music is kind of a letdown. Anyway, their new record Kult De Hasses — which is German for “Cult of Hate” — is, well, an Acheron record. There’s NOTHING here that’ll shock you if you’ve heard them before; it’s old-school underground death metal. I certainly don’t want to hate this; they’ve definitely put in their time in the scene. This has a very ’80s/’90s death metal feel, and that’s cool, I guess. Not bad, but not a groundbreaking release by any means. So, I’m not going to totally slag this, and TROO death fans will dig this. Guttural vocals, heavy riffage, sometimes a little groovy, blasts and things like that. 4 Fucking Pecks.
“A firestorm to purify the bane that society drowns in.” That’s right, sXe peeps, EARTH CRISIS are back at it again with Salvation of Innocents. C’mon, do you even need to read further? There’s chugs, thrashy riffs, breakdowns and socially conscious lyrics, everything that Earth Crisis is known for. With the exception of the songs. This could be any hardcore bands release, and doesn’t reek of Earth Crisis. Maybe this sound is just too dated to me. There are some strong moments, and the breakdowns are almost worthy of like punching things — or in my case, pecking things. This isn’t horrible, but just not super sweet, although I think I’d have a hard time saying any Earth Crisis record was super sweet. So… 4 Fucking Pecks.
