Construcdead - Violadead - [Black Lodge]

2004-10-04

Apart from their brilliant name and album title, the band has been releasing quality releases for some time, their former album was a solid piece of death metal, melodic yet harsh, but nothing could have prepared me for the direction they have taken with this one.

The band has taken a whole new interpretation of their music, this time sounding closer to harsh metal-core with strong death metal resemblance, they integrate melodic vocals, electronic passages, catchy choruses, and certainly sound nothing like they used to before.

That is not necessarily a bad thing, as much as I liked their former musical style, I kind of got into the vibe this record sets out to achieve, a melodic yet intricate combination of metal-core like vocals and structures, with melodic death metal drumming and riffs, strangely enough, this wild mixture works, and the album belts out winner after winner, with very few tracks slowing down the breakneck speed evident through most of the album.

The album's sound is both very clear and yet raw and energetic, the guitars are down tuned in just the proper way, opening track Pinhook starts out much closer to the death metal basics, with fast and furious riffing and drum beat, with the chorus serving as a reminder of the band's radical change.

One cannot really compare this to other bands that tend to unite melodic death metal with metal core, such as Killswitch Engage, the band's death metal is much more evident, and even though song structures are on a more basic nature, the mixture is much heavier then most bands of the same ilk.

All in all, a great album, call it what you will, Construcdead kick ass.

Alon Miasnikov