Saturday, June 22, 2019

SAVIOR - Podział (2019)

The Salvific Convention

After two years since the first debut Ep has been thrown to the underground, Savior strikes back and tries to save some souls with its visions of metal. For starters, it's a good piece of news that beside digital versions, there's a physical format released simultaneously, given in a rather modest form with lyrics, wrong track order and grim band's photography. Yep, that's right, joke is over now, as Savior simply got matured in every aspect as compared to the previous „Panów pan”. First of all, still keeping sound realization in the underground frames, they got it more organic, maybe at the cost of first Ep rawness a bit, yet the result is pretty satisfying, especially when it comes to drums. Secondly, the first words alert it won't be a nice excursion. That's true, two years of rehearsals, gigs and countless drops of sweat should be a drayhorse to reach any progress and the opening song called „Ty” confirms this natural way of development. And if „Ciemne ludy” had some broken rhythms, here I have a real feast of tunes in the vein of Artillery, being fantastic mix of „Cybermind” and „Khomaniac”: catchy riffs, not easy for headbanging arythmic driven paces, gentle guitar passage in the middle and agonizing Jordan's vocals. One shot, one kill and one wonder at the same time... Only two and a half minutes run extremely fast, leaving me with an 'I want fuckin' more such a mutilation, guys' impression...

The Ep contains of three songs clocking in twelve minutes, and it's a clever measure. Each track has something different to offer and so is the next „Obywatel”. Preceded by horror-movie introduction... wait, wait, no, I need to hold my horses, too much goregrind stuff lately. All right, once again: preceded by short talk about the main colours in Polish society, it becomes a song with less thrashing vibes and more clean Jordan vocals, based on fast memorable theme, with changing tempo and furious lead. But the best is yet to come. I mean, the closing and the longest one is a kind of twist ending for sure, being an obvious evidence the band doesn't want to be a slave of any limits or constraints. Despite Vektorish-like portions of riffs, Savior tries to sneak out the thrashing formula, providing both calmer acoustic sounds with melodic chanting and all-consuming drum cannonades that hook death metal domain. And in contrast to this controlled sonic speedy disruption, the second part seems to be a couch potato: very, very slow pace dominates and when it doesn't want to go fast, Jordan changes his voice to more guttural. Yes, these slowdowns in the vein of Dying Fetus or Ingested really smash all the organs without any mercy! That is completely unexpected, yet it sounds absolutely perfect to me. Believe me, I listened to many thrash slabs for years and such a method of sonic execution is given for the first time in the genre, I guess. What's more, „Nam B(Jaro)sław” has a chorus no one can miss. Simply, a highlight!

In a deep sorrow I must avow I missed their last gig this June during the next editon of „The Massacre of the Innocents”, as my son didn't share my enthusiasm and preferred to slaughter me during FIFA 19 game to listen to any metal noise. You know, priorities. Anyway, it's not a challenging task to summarize „Podział”. I am very pleased with the final effort, even if the short adjective aspires to be one of the most important word on the board. Well, as mentioned above, there is a progress, vision and off the chain youth. The holy trinity that will lead them to a full-length, I hope. I'd like to write all the doors are open for them... but unfortunately I have to quote Tadeusz Sznuk 'not exactly' right now, as due to the whole lyrical content, Savior won't be invited on PiS convention, however I've got a strange feeling the band will handle the issue.

80/100
-Tlacaxipehualiztli

(written in June, 2019, in searing heat)


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