2005-11-13
The Brummies are at it again, the city that spawned heavy metal did it's own for death metal with bands such as Benediction and Napalm Death, and now does it again with Mistress, a band that sounds as if hailing from Death Metal's glory days in the early 90's.
The thing that struck me first was how similar was is the sound of the album to the classic Swedish death metal albums, it has the Entombed sound pegged in everything but the screeching of the fast guitar riffs evident in such albums as "Left Hand Path", the band's mix of death/grind/doom/sludge metal comes off as heavier than most bands I've heard lately, and the sound contributes a lot to that.
The vocals are also the kind of deep, heavy, not-exactly-growled variety that Napalm Death's Barney Greenway uses, and the delivery in the opening title track is nothing short of amazing, the combination of the hard-core riff, the Entombed feel, and the heavy groove turn this one into a winner. To illustrative what this sounds like; try imagining listening to Entombed's evolution as a band in one song, from the heavy-handed (pun intended) death metal of "Left Hand Path", to the Sabbath-groove of their later releases.
The band uses some heavy sludge and doom riffs, but does not slow down in the process, songs such as "At Arms Length" still maintain that rock n' Roll groove that started out in the title track, while sounding brutal and heavy.
They're not afraid to experiment, either," Static" suddenly uses a guitar melody line that could have fitted well in a power metal album, and the vocals do a mean impression of "Spinal Tap" (or "Bad News" if you're British), actually pulling off a great melodic segment in a way that Entombed Or Bolt Thrower wouldn’t be caught dead using.
Blast beats also make an appearance- fast, with a high resounding Snare sound, it's brutal and uncompromising, but in spite of its resemblance to a grind album, the Punk element is certainly also there, in the riffs and the attitude, but seeing as Napalm Death, for one, was heavily influenced by early 80's punk and hard core it seems quite logical with Mistress too.
It's always nice to hear that some of the music that I spent most of my high school years listening to in the early 90's, can live on, and in such a quality release. this one gets thumbs up, all the way.
Alon Miasnikov
