Funnily enough the first thing I thought of when looking at the impressive cover art of this was that the Gomorah logo was heavily reminiscent of that of Bloodbath. The music however is not, whereas the Bloody ones revel in oldschoolfuckendeathmetal, Gomorah are all about the new way of doing things or deathcore as I believe the kids are calling it nowadays. ‘By The Means Of Violence’ is a strong release from this fairly young Virginian band. I am hesitant to refer to it as an album though despite the fact that this is what the blurb states, as it is only 20 minutes long. Still this digital download release is not going to cost an arm or a leg or even rip your heart out of your wallet (ahem back to that cover art again).
Starting with Mardukian sounds of war and a tinkling piano sonata we go into ‘Battle Of The Gods’ and a shelling from the drummer on intro that really does deserve full marks for sounding just like a Gatling gun. From there we venture into angry yells, snarls and grunts with fluid Gothenburg inspired guitars flails driving along the music. It’s not ground breaking stuff by any means and is nothing that you won’t have heard a million times before but this is enthusiastic and well executed. There is room for soloing and these leads allow the music to breathe and give a break from the intensity. Mind you that is at full thrust as we pig grunt into ‘Dawn Of A Dead Age’ which sets off like it is determined to rip you a new one.
Luckily ‘Excrement is far from…. (oh I just can’t do it) and again the drumming here excels, chundering along like turds down the pipes at a sewage plant. Instrumentation gets a bit more adventurous and haywire here and this rages all over the shop, throwing in a sample from ‘The Devils Rejects’ along the way for good measure. After a short mellow bridge we fly into the title track particularly impressive with guitars flying up and down the scales and enforcing the melody.
The running time worked in this ones favour, I don’t think I could have coped with a full 45 minutes of this but enjoyed it as it was. I think 20 minutes is about all the audience would cope with when this lot play live too, certainly any longer and a call will need to be made, “send more paramedics.”
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