I have given this one a couple of spins over the past few weeks and whilst I could not say that it is as a direct result of this release, I did notice how much more accommodating I have become of these metalcore releases nowadays. I think there is something about intelligence in most of the music I enjoy nowadays and this possesses intelligence no small quantity, and given that hardcore punk is often thought of as being such a simple style of music this perhaps seems like an OTT statement to some degree. 7 Angels 7 Plagues go beyond any basic template though. The death metal chug on ‘Someday’ being one such example of this more exploratory attribute that the band can muster without making it sound intrusive, or just a selection of ideas thrown together. At the same time the melodic elements of the album seem to possess an almost Deftones, nu-metal quality to them which only manages to further my enjoyment of the album.

I am on the fence about the vocals if I am honest. They grate, yet at the same time I have to agree that they sort of fit perfectly. As a contrast to some of the post-metal moments or just as a more stark opposing force to the great use of melody in general, it is hard to argue that they are not performed in an interesting way. I am not offended by the inclusion of the interludes, but I could quite easily get through the album without them; they most certainly are the weaker tracks overall from the listing. For a band that seemed to be capable of filling the space around them well enough with sound that was intriguing and thoughtful it does strike me as odd that they have included these “palate-cleansers” at all. When you can write the droning chaos present on tracks like ‘Away with Words’ and accompany them to a backdrop of near cinematic percussion, you don’t need to provide fiddling acoustic numbers to prove anything really.

The mood for this current listen through this album tonight is perfect. After a long day with lots of elements jostling for possession of my time, it is cathartic to listen to an album of a similar pulsing multitude of parts and hear them all so well balanced and clearly given space around each other. Perhaps other than the vocals, there is little in the way of any one element dominating proceedings. Overall it feels more of busy as opposed to a heavy record, and I say that without aiming it as a criticism. It does settle into some weighty rhythms I concede but this is not my overarching takeaway from the listening experience. I have a sense that as I listen to more early metalcore, I may get to understand better the importance of this record in terms of it genre developing credentials but at this early stage of my understanding of these things, I can only rate this record on individual merit.

Lots of black metal bands like to kickstart their albums with some slow build up. And then you have Cabinet, who's like, "Nope. I'ma shove a dump truck full of dirt on top of your head. Here's music that sounds like a corpse is digging back to the surface and growling while the earth keeps getting stuck in its mouth. Then halfway through the first track, we get guitars that sound like the music that plays when flies are buzzing around you in the cartoons, expect the flies are gonna kill you. But because of the heavier focus on the noise factor, there's less melody and more chugging than usual, at least there is when the war metal takes the stage. When you have the doomy stuff with the creppy chanting in "Precipitating Pneumonoconiosis In The Cremation Cellar," (I totally copy/pasted that) there's more "songwriting" involved. And out guy's going a little crazier with the sound effects this time. He ends one track with the bubbling sounds of having your head forced underwater, one track ends with collecting wheezings and coughs, and there is one disturbing narration that I won't ruin for you. But overall, this album may be more of the same at its core, but its war metal is dirtier and its clearer edges are smoother. Definitely has a lot of replay value.

90

An artist that I have somehow missed (or perhaps subconsciously avoided) up until now, Devildriver stomped late into my weekly listening after many years of total neglect. The initial four songs on Strike and Kill do indeed land with a deadly accuracy, their thrashing grooves leaving little room for breath in fact. ‘Dead in the Water’ marginally steals the run on the title track as being the standout of the opening salvo of tracks. The track has a ferocious nature to it that is just so infectious, that it becomes near impossible to ignore after one listen. Groove metal rarely moves me, but I would put Strike and Kill on a par with the last Exhorder album in terms of unexpected entertainment levels.

Unlike Exhorder however, Devildriver have always had a penchant for dipping into the wider metal genre pool and just as I start to get all carried away with myself, elements of melodic metalcore/melodic death metal start to appear from ‘In the Moonlight’ onwards. These moments do go a long way to breaking up some of the repetition of the album, since even within the more positively received opening track listing it does suffer from Machine Head like predictability creeping into the edges. Whilst it is hard to call them disruptive, these moments do blunt the attack somewhat in what is clearly aligned to be an “in your face” type of record. Lyrically things are a bit hit and miss also at times but the guitar playing is a clear cut above everything else (yuck, clicky drums).

Whilst I almost expected a decline in quality over the second half of the album, there is an argument to say that fear is never fully realised. If anything, the albums lull is in the middle section over tracks seven through ten, with there being a marked recovery to get us to the end of the record. The superb blast of fury that is ‘Oath of Iron’ is completely unexpected and that track alone manages to fully steer the album back into my repeat plays list for the future. I am not going to pretend that this is album of the year material by any means, which is fine because I don’t get the impression that this is why Jez and co released the record in the first place. However, I can’t get away from the fact that this is an infectious affair, full of riffs and tantalising melodies on the leads that I have just lapped up for the last forty-eight-hours.

Melbourne's Axatak are often referred to as a key player in the early Australian metal scene that was still just in its development stage during the early-to-mid 1980's. Their four-piece lineup got together some time between 1981 & 1983 before quickly becoming a mainstay of the local live scene. During their time together, Axatak produced one demo, one full-length album (i.e. 1984's "Shock Rock") & this five-song E.P. which I actually never explored until earlier this decade. Axatak wouldn't be around for too long though, disbanding in 1988 off the back of frontman Andy Zouman having become a born-again Christian & subsequently producing a film about the influence of Satan on rock music. 

Axatak are widely known for being heavily influenced by KISS. In fact, they started as a KISS cover band so it's no real surprise that their image involved makeup & theatricality. They could no doubt play a bit though, as can be seen from the performances on this E.P. which certainly has its moments. Guitarist's Pete Denero & John McCulloch know a thing or two about shreddy 1980's guitar solos & drummer Don Hailes keeps a tight rhythm throughout. The production job offers plenty of clarity but does tend to feel a little too separated with the high-end being a touch too prominent. It's the inconsistency of the song-writing that's the real issue here though as this is somewhat of a roller coaster ride in that regard. I quite like hard-rocking opener "Shock Rock" (which was also the title track of the band's debut album) & the more metallic "Let the Beast Run Wild" (my personal favourite) but the remaining three songs all fail to hit the mark, particularly the God-awful power ballad "You" which reeks of Motley Crue at their worst. Zouman's vocals are patchy at times & the weakest points of the release generally match up with his biggest failures.

Axatak's sound sits somewhere between the US glam metal that was booming at the time & the classic heavy metal that most of us know & love. You need to be a little patient if you go in searching for the metal side of that equation though as the first couple of tracks don't really present much in that respect with all of the genuine metal appearing during the middle & end of the release where you can expect to hear some aggressive bottom-string palm-muting & even a bit of tremolo-picking, reminding one of WASP more so than the band's idols KISS. I have to warn you that gang vocals are drawn upon quite regularly during the choruses which can be a deterrent for those with a weak stomach for the glammier side of Axatak's delivery, me included.

While this is certainly a better record than Kings Cross' dodgy "Gimme" E.P. from the previous year which traverses similar creative ground, I still wouldn't recommend "Axatak" as an early Australian metal release worth pursuing. It sounds more like a demo than it does a proper release as the songs deserve a glossier coat of paint, one which they likely would have received had the band resided in Los Angeles. I can easily understand how Axatak would have gone down really well in the Melbourne live scene of the time though as their sound & image would have translated very well to the stage. I'm just not terribly surprised that they didn't break out of the local live scene for wider success.

For fans of Bengal Tigers, Boss & WASP.

Victoria's Mortification may not be a household name for extreme metalheads around the globe these days but, for those who are dedicated to the teachings of Lord Jesus Christ, they may be the most important artist in the entire Christian metal movement. Mortification began life as a fairly uneventful heavy/power metal band by the name of Light Force that was built around long-standing bass player Steve Rowe back in 1985. Light Force didn't exactly achieve world domination but they did manage to release two full-length albums during the back half of the 1980's before Rowe gave in to his new-found passion for more extreme metal sounds & transitioned Light Force into something altogether different in 1990. Guitarist Cameron Hall would soon depart, being replaced by Michael Carlisle who would join Rowe & drummer Jayson Sherlock (Revulsed/Deliverance/Horde/Paramæcium) to record the self-titled Mortification debut album in 1991, a record that would become my entry point for the band shortly afterwards. The trio would go on to produce a couple more important records for the Christian metal scene in 1992's "Scrolls of the Megilloth" & 1993's "Post Momentary Affliction" before changing their style dramatically & confusing a large portion of their fanbase with 1994's "Blood World" which took more of a groove metal approach. The band have maintained their presence consistently ever since, returning to their death metal roots during the mid-2000's.

My introduction to Mortification would come through underground metal radio programming in the early 1990's with the opening track "Until the End" from the self-titled album representing ground zero. I generally liked what I heard from the "Mortification" album but it would be Ben who would ensure that my exposure to the band would reach a new level when he picked up their second full-length "Scrolls of the Megilloth" a couple of years later, following that purchase up with Mortification's next couple of CDs progressively over time. I wouldn't say that I ever found myself genuinely loving any of these releases but I did always maintain a level of respect for Mortification, despite their Christian affiliations which have always been at odds with my strong Atheistic beliefs. The fact that you really wouldn't know any better unless you read the lyric sheets certainly helped in that regard as I never had any intention of allowing their God-fearing message to reach my conscious more directly.

The "Mortification" album is somewhat of a transitional album in the band's creative journey. It sees the trio shunning their earlier classic metal influences altogether by adopting the more extreme style that Light Force had hinted at on their 1990 "Break the Curse" demo tape with three of the six songs from that relatively unknown release being re-recorded for this debut full-length. "Mortification" offers a fairly basic brand of death/thrash with the boys still very much trying to find their own sound & often resorting to crude imitations of the bands that influenced them. The music is generally more thrash based than it is genuine death metal at this point but those lines are often blurred. You won't find too many blast beats here though with the gruff death grunts of Rowe being the main element that ties the "Mortification" album to death metal.

The debut album was produced by American Roger Martinez who was known as the vocalist & guitarist from LA Christian thrash metallers Vengeance Rising with the result being a pretty rough & ready effort that's noticeably lacking in precision & bottom end. Despite the basic nature of the riff construction though, Mortification had a knack for producing catchy death metal hooks & it's this component that maintains my interest for the majority of the record. "Until the End", the short 33-second blast of "Turn", my personal favourite "No Return" & energetic closer "The Majestic Infiltration of Order" are all excellent examples of the early Mortification sound but there are some flat periods to be found across the eleven tracks, particularly during the latter stages of the B side with a three-song run that doesn't do a lot for me. You'll no doubt be able to pick up a couple of riffs that have been pulled straight from Metallica's "Kill 'Em All" too which isn't something you would usually find on a death metal record but, as I said earlier, this was very much a transitional release for these Victorians.

While I haven't paid any attention to Mortification's lengthy string of releases since 1995's "Primitive Rhythm Machine" sixth album, they do still hold a place in my heart as one of the bands who inspired me to start my own death metal band. They were amongst the earliest Aussie acts to reach international recognition so I've always maintained a level of respect for them, even if I can't get onboard with their Christian messaging. Looking back now, the Mortification debut isn't a bad record either & it compares pretty well with "Scrolls of the Megilloth" in terms of quality to tell you the truth, although I would no doubt pick their sophomore effort over this introductory effort if I had to choose. Neither represent anything terribly essential for the death metal community though in my opinion & I doubt that Mortification would have amounted to much had it not been for their religious slant. Still... I can't deny that I get some enjoyment out of their first few albums, despite rarely feeling the urge to return to them.

For fans of Master, Cancer & early Living Sacrifice.