Below and Above: Blood Is the Mortar
Only just
one year these Mexican bringers of sonic brutality needed to unleash another bloody
beast into the bowels of the underground. Again under the banner of American
Line, but as a five-piece crew with new hopes I guess. Their previous album “Deathbringer”
was a really solid crippling death metal slab maintained mostly in the vein of
Krisiun and Rebaelliun, and, luckily, nothing has been changed on the board. I
mean, musically beside still obvious Brazilian influences I can add some
Suffocation and Vader reminiscences to the whole. Speaking about the production
and sound realization, I must admit that it is simple better. Firstly, George’s
vocal parts are louder (and they sound good at last) in the final mix as
compared to the previous album. Secondly, musical side of the album got rawer,
crisper and more energetic blow. The album sounds really uncompromisingly
causing mass devastation of my senses.
Of course,
a good production is for nothing while the musicians are dilettanti and losers.
Fortunately Toño Drowned and his company are not,
as they serve fast and aggressive music art. I don’t demand here any signs of
sophisticated originality and I know why these tunes were created for. The main
target is a listener’s mind, to bombard it by unmerciful and blasting ravager. And
they did it undoubtedly. The Mexicans smartly juggle the songs tempo and don’t
deliver one track very fast with one speed, the other with a low speed. No,
everything here is well-balanced and the rhythm changes shown in every single
track make the album absolutely not monotonous. At first sight it seems that
the basis of “Underworld” is a Led’s work and his bulldozer drums. And this
feeling is right, but luckily he doesn’t play blast beasts exclusively and the
tempo’s rotation is hearable, however, as he stated in the booklet, “play fast
or death”. Is that clear? What is more, the balance between drum and bass drum
is maintained. Supported by a fine Allory Studio sound realization, the drums
are living force of the album. The second element of rhythm section marches
together with the guitar avalanche, in two songs (“Feed and Please” and
“Endless Time”), when the Drowned in Blood machine slow down and keeps the
silence for a while, I can listen to bass show lasting merely few short
seconds.
During many
careful listens to this album, one thing is sure as hell: Toño matured as a composer and musician. And the album is a good example
for that. There is no any haphazard sound, there is no any useless and fake
tone. It makes that “Underworld” has no signs of boredom, which is so important
in such an intense music. Songs are made of solid, interesting, sometimes even
catchy groups of riffs (“Autosacrifice”, “The Descent”, “Feed and Please” to
name a few) with rather chaotic leads and it’s very hard to choose the best one
here. It confirms the equally high level of the whole performance. The band
used movie samples (taken from Gibson’s “Apocalypto”) as well, but it is served
only two times, on the beginning of “Autosacrifice” and “Demise”. Also, the last
song “Becoming” is a really worthy of note, being an instrumental bass piece,
it fits perfectly to be a good track to end the entirety. As compared to the
similar move from the previous album, it isn’t too long, doesn’t soften
“Underworld”, and brings some dark and worrisome atmosphere. Really good work!
The
instrumental side of “Underworld” is clear right now, and there is a need to
write something about vocals and lyrics, as one person is responsible for that.
His name is George, but he doesn’t bring any radical changes in his singing comparing
to the previous work, still it’s a kind of semi-growl with mixed styles of A.
Camargo (Krisiun), Peter (Vader) and F. Mullen (Suffocation). As you can see,
nothing original, yet this mix works here unobstructed, vocals lines are
clean-cut and audible. What is more, George wrote better lyrics focused on the
history of Mexican land before the Spanish conquest. But while revising the
lyrics, I couldn’t find any direct references to names or places. I must admit,
it has its own charm: all is bathed in blood, sacrifices, rituals, ceremonies
and mythology. The entirety is fastened by summing all the things up “Cosmic
Domain” text. The lyrics framing is intensified by a front cover, that’s for
sure, but this work is definitely made in our modern times, however it renders
the overall “Underworld” character in a good way. It is worthy to scrutinize
the background with Maya reliefs and fragments of ornamented wall (?). After
opening the digipack out, the Mayan monumental Chichén Itzá’s temple “El
Castillo” shows its boundless beauty…
Several
times I had to compare this album to the second band’s full-length. And I can
see here a progress, maybe not so big, but I cannot make a mistake what band is
it, and now Drowned in Blood is a complete crew. A killing crew, I must add. For
sure this album is a great listen if you’re death metal freak. By means of
simple tools and ideas the band managed to record a real soundtrack to the
brutality of the past. Without hindrance “Underworld” retained a place on my
shelf with the ‘very good death metal’ titles. There is no need to pray for
originality, and I wrote about some influences, but the overall striking force
reminds me of Polish Embrional and their debut album “Absolutely Anti-Human
Behaviors”. Even if the style of death metal is quite different while comparing
these two bands, one thing is the same: the omnipresent feeling of blood and
death.
And with blood
the Mexicans formed a beast. The underworld beast staring at me…
90/100
-Tlacaxipehualiztli
(written on March, 2014)
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