Originally released on the tiny Eternity Records back in 2006, this is the 2009 re-issue by Apollon Records of Brilliant Coldness’ sophomore album. Hailing from Ukraine (a country more known for its black and pagan metal to me personally), these guys play a technical brand of death metal that would have fans of early Gorguts or Cannibal Corpse salivating.
Firstly, let the ‘technical’ word not put you off as it does many. This is no crazy ‘guitar school’ metal band who rely on being technical for technicalities sake in some sort of unspoken pissing contest. In fact, there is a fantastic old school vibe about the music Brilliant Coldness create which made me think that this could easily have been fished out of an early nineties obscure death metal catalogue. The rhythm section is possibly my favourite thing on this album (yes, even more than the riffs!). It reminds me so much of Paul Mazurkiewicz and Alex Webster’s incredible work together on ‘The Bleeding’ (the Barnes-esque growl probably helps that similarity too). There’s the odd nod to the more technical edges of Pestilence in the songwriting and soaring solo work that emblazons a lot of the riffage, adding another notch to their enjoyability factor for me. The lurching guitars ebb a metronome like ability for time keeping, working well with the twangy bass-lines and crazed rhythm of the drums to compress everything into an extremely tight sound (if these guys are this tight live, they’d certainly be something worth witnessing).
Perhaps Ukraine’s death metal scene is 20 years behind everyone elses? If that’s the case, I’m certainly not complaining on this evidence. Of course, whilst ‘Poisoned Reality’ isn’t exactly going to blow you away with its sheer ingenuity and originality, it certainly did the job sating my hunger for old school death metal on a shitty, snowy day. Brilliant Coldness indeed.
http://www.myspace.com/brilliantcoldness
